Let’s state the point clearly: Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz failed utterly to put a dent in Donald Trump or his seemingly clear path to the Republican nomination. In their defense, it was a huge challenge. If Trump does as well on Tuesday as the current polls suggest, he will likely be unstoppable. Not necessarily because the numbers will make him inevitable but because the pageantry of winning will continue to elevate Trump and overwhelm Rubio and Cruz. To prevent that, one or the other needed to land a devastating blow – something on the level of what Chris Christie did to Rubio before New Hampshire. Frankly, it needed to be even worse. They didn’t come close.
I’m hearing a cavalcade of Republican operatives and pundits on the cable nets this morning explaining how Trump is basically done, caput, might as well get out of the race now. Hard-charging Rubio flustered him, beat him up, showed that he doesn’t deal in policy details. We all have ways in believing what we want to believe, especially when the alternatives are so bleak. I’m willing to believe that Trump lost some of his support from the part of his coalition which is made of people who thought he was a leading public policy mind. But I’m figuring there weren’t that many of those people. So probably not a problem.
The hits about Trump not being a real conservative were, I think, equally off the mark and actually revealing about how Movement Conservatives and Republican elites don’t fully get what a lot of their voters actually mean by ‘conservative’.
With the Christie endorsement and Trump’s once-again dominance of the daily news cycle, I think we can say that the MSM’s latest imaginary Rubio comeback last approximately eleven hours.
Trump now proposing 2006/07-style “surge” in on-going War on Christmas.
In amazing moment at Texas rally, coming off the Christie endorsement press conference, pulls out a water bottle and does a bit of impromptu anti-Rubio performance art. Watch.
Trump announces: “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
I’ll give Rubio this. This morning’s stump speeches are a different Rubio, a whole new operating system, harsher, funnier, freer. The one we’re listening to now is identical to the stump speech this morning. But okay, that’s a stump speech. The thing is, I don’t think it’s enough. He’s already defined. Trump is too far ahead. Contrary to what almost everyone said last night, Trump did very well. And Tuesday is the big windfall of delegates. The Christie endorsement didn’t change the tide. It just cemented it. Another punch to the face for Rubio when he could least afford it.
On the bright side, after Trump is elected President, we’ll be able to look at Turkey and Italy and say, “Bros, we topped you.”
And yes, we’ll need to say ‘bros’.
We can also tell Toronto.
The saving grace for the GOP is that if they’re actually able to destroy Trump with a brutal, scorched earth total war which drives all the way to the convention, he’ll definitely go away quietly.