Ted Cruz answers a question as Marco Rubio looks on during a Republican presidential primary debate on Jan. 28, 2016, in Des Moines
While Trump has publicly jabbed the RNC over its handling of the GOP debates and for what he believes is stacking the debate with anti-Trump attendees, RNC insiders say they are ready to work with a Trump nominee.
“There are a lot of people who think he’s not electable and if they are right it is going to have really negative impacts down the ticket, but Trump keeps surprising people so maybe those doomsayers are wrong about Trump,” Nicholson said. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are desperate for voters and donors to believe that they’re the man to stop Donald Trump.
There is little persuasive evidence that it’s true.
If the polling is accurate, and it generally has been so far, Donald Trump is poised to roll through the next two sets of contests. And GOP operatives and party elders over the last 24 hours have privately begun to concede that neither can likely defeat Trump, even on a united ticket.
And lower-tier candidates — John Kasich and Ben Carson — are showing no sign of dropping out which continues to splinter the anti-Trump vote. With three early state wins in a row, the real estate mogul’s margins of victory are getting bigger, not smaller over other candidates.
“I think they’re probably doomed. I think they are not definitely doomed, but the sand is running out of the hourglass real soon,” said Sam Wang, founder of the Princeton Elections Consortium, who has studied the delegate rules in depth. “There’s not a scenario where ‘not-Trump’ has an advantage, with the possible exception of Texas [for Cruz]. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we were talking about Mitt Romney. He would be the clear winner.”
A problem for the “not Trumps” is that polling and past performance suggest Trump would win in either a crowded primary or in a one-on-one matchup, in large part because he benefits from the momentum accrued during his three consecutive victories in early states. And Trump’s favored to win many of the March states – including the home states of Rubio and Kasich.
Still, most insiders who have studied the election map believe that one of the not-Trumps has a slightly better shot at stopping him if he can get Trump into a one-on-one matchup.
But it’s still a long shot. And it’s unlikely it will get to that in the first place.
After winning the Nevada Caucus with a resounding 46 percent of the vote, Trump attempted to puncture ruminations among his opponents and the political classes that fewer candidates would create a different outcome.
“They keep forgetting when other people drop out, we are going to get a lot of votes," Trump told supporters Tuesday night. He paraphrased political pundits, saying “if they could just take the other candidates and add them up, if you could add them up, because you know the other candidates amount to 55 percent.”
In addition to being talented and popular on the GOP campaign trail, Trump is insanely lucky — heading into the decisive March contests, he enjoys a battlefield that would be the envy of any field general occupying the high ground facing an enemy divided into two powerful, but mutually hostile armies.
With the notable exception of Cruz’s home state of Texas, polls show Trump is in a strong position to win a majority of the states in early March, when 963 delegates are at stake. It takes 1,237 to win the nomination.
And Trump is poised to win at least 200 of those early March delegates and as many as half — or 482 of them — according to experts who have studied the March-state maps and delegate rules. Under most of those state’s rules, the winner is disproportionately awarded delegates and, for many, those who get 20 percent or less of the vote get no delegates.
So for most states, Trump is helped by a crowded field because he can disproportionately win delegates by taking about 30 percent of the vote.
But it isn’t only the math that’s complicated. So are the emotions.
And everyone has an argument for why he should be the one to stay in.
“It entails putting egos aside — it’s what we saw with Jeb Bush in South Carolina the other night. It’s not a decision these guys easily get to in the end,” said University of Georgia political science professor Josh Putnam, who has studied the delegate situation and generally agrees with Wang.
In some ways, the not-Trump candidates need each other. Rubio needs Cruz in the March 1st Super Tuesday contest because it ensures Trump doesn’t outright win Texas, which has 155 delegates. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote in Texas, he would win all of the delegates there. Cruz, based on the most-recent polling, has an edge over Trump there.
After March 15, the math becomes even tougher for the not-Trump candidates. That’s when Florida and Ohio vote. They’re winner-take-all states. Trump leads in both, according to the most-recent polls. A Florida win by Trump would likely be a fatal blow to Rubio and give Trump 99 delegates. An Ohio win by Trump would likely kill Kasich’s candidacy and give Trump 66 delegates.
As if to underscore Trump's momentum and good fortune, he gained an additional delegate at Rubio's expense Wednesday after New Hampshire finalized its results. Trump now has 82 delegates followed by Cruz (17), Rubio (16), Kasich (6) and Carson (4).
GOP establishment operatives and donors are increasingly becoming resigned to the fact that Trump could be the party’s nominee.
"So long as this is a three-person race, it’s increasingly hard to see how anyone or certainly Cruz or Rubio amasses 1,237 delegates before the convention," said Brian Walsh, a GOP consultant who has worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the past. "That’s not to say that Trump could still not implode, or Republican voters could wake up but obviously people have been saying that for months and that has not happen. I don’t think anyone can put their eggs in that basket."
Several Republicans said that the only way to stop Trump would be for Cruz or Rubio to have a strong showing on March 15 — a possibility that is unlikely if Trump does well on Super Tuesday and maintains momentum going into the winner-take-all primaries.
“I think it’s a possibility that we have to recognize,” said former RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson. “It’s now moving toward some clarity and I think if Trump becomes the nominee it’s beholden to the Republican Party to get behind him and make sure that we get him elected.”
GOP campaign operatives have already begun gaming out and spinning how a Trump ticket could potentially help incumbents in key Senate races. Trump’s ability to increase overall turnout and gin up white men voters are two arguments they are making to donors and lobbyists, according to multiple sources in meetings with Senate chiefs of staff and campaign advisors.
While Trump has publicly jabbed the RNC over its handling of the GOP debates and for what he believes is stacking the debate with anti-Trump attendees, RNC insiders say they are ready to work with a Trump nominee.
“There are a lot of people who think he’s not electable and if they are right it is going to have really negative impacts down the ticket, but Trump keeps surprising people so maybe those doomsayers are wrong about Trump,” Nicholson said.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/marco-rubio-ted-cruz-219753
