We all know about the twitter war between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, regarding their wives.  An anti-Trump Super Pac ran a nude picture of Melanie Trump and asked if people really wanted this to be the next first lady.  What Trump should have done is condemned an obvious cheap shot on his wife.  He should have blamed Cruz, which would have probably worked even though Cruz had nothing to do with this. That would have really hurt Cruz.  But instead Trump responded by threatening Heidi Cruz.  Then, incredibly, he posted an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz next to a glowing picture Melanie Trump.  It was a huge mistake. Cruz responded with a withering attack on Trump.  Cruz looked straight into the camera and called Trump a sniveling coward.  This is a classic example of someone taking on a bully and taking him out.  It was a beautiful thing.

Then today, National Inquirer published a hit piece on Ted Cruz alleging numerous sex scandals.  Coincidence?  Probably not! Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for year.  Trump even recommended David Pecker to be the CEO of Time Magazine. National Enquirer ran a hit piece on Jeb Bush claiming he was involved in the drug trade and also accused Bush of a sex scandal.  It ran an article slamming Carly Fiorina for her druggie daughter.  Numerous times it has reported that Hillary Clinton is dying, she has strokes, brain cancer, depression, alcoholism, ms, endometriosis and paranoia. It even ran a hit piece on Ben Carson accusing him of medical malpractice.  But with regard to Donald Trump, the National Enquirer publishes glowing headlines.  For example it ran an article with a flattering picture of Trump saying: “The Man Behind the Legend.”

Following is a video clip from CNN this morning.  Kate Bolduan was hosting a segment regarding the twitter war.  She asked Trump supporter Adriana Cohen if she was ready to move on.  She didn’t take the hint.  The link to the video is below:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-supporter-derails-cnn-segment-by-accusing-fellow-guest-of-having-an-affair-with-ted-cruz/

Instead of moving on, Cohen dropped the National Inquirer story on Amanda Carpenter, who is one of the alleged mistresses.  Bolduan tried desperately to stop Cohen from repeating the story and quickly said that CNN is not supporting the National Inquirer report:

 “It will come as no surprise to our viewers, CNN has no reporting on what you’re talking about coming from from The National Enquirer,”  

Then Amanda Carpenter fought back.  This is the kind of defense you get from someone who has been falsely accused:

“What’s out there is tabloid trash.  If someone wants to comment on it, they can talk to my lawyer.  It’s categorically false.  You should be ashamed for spreading this smut.  Donald Trump supporters should be held to account for it.  …I will not be intimidated.  I will continue to make my thoughts known about Donald Trump.  I’m not backing down.”

This is the kind of denial that you get when someone is confronted with a patently false accusation.  When you get this kind of response your lawyer starts checking your insurance policy to see if you have coverage for a defamation of character claim.

I have been watching the news and neither Fox News nor CNN is doing ANY reporting on this story.  This story is exploding on twitter, primarily by people who are more than willing to believe any negative rumor about Ted Cruz.

This is incredible. It has the potential to do far more damage to Trump than to Cruz.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of people who have been trashed by the National Enquirer seize the day.  Just recently we had the huge verdict with regard to Erin Andrews and Hulk Hogan. Ironically it is Donald Trump who has suggested that we change laws to make it easier to sue for libel.  Checked your own insurance lately Donald.

TDM

Did you notice something yesterday?  For the past several months, if you turned on your Television you saw Donald Trump.  My wife is so disgusted with this that she now turns off the Television every time she sees a picture of Donald Trump or hears his name mentioned.   This usually takes less than one minute.  Yesterday was very different.  It wasn’t Donald Trump on the screen, it was Ted Cruz.

There were two things that supposedly inspired this change.  One was the silly twitter exchange between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  Someone, apparently a Super Pac ran a nude picture of Melania Trump and asked Mormons in Utah if they wanted this to be next First Lady of the United States.  The picture was real, but Donald was not amused.  He promised to spill the beans on Heidi Cruz.  Then he posted side by side pictures apparently designed to show how much more beautiful Melania Trump is than Heidi Cruz.  It was immature but also stupid.  He just verified what people already knew about Melania Trump, her number one attribute is physical beauty.  She looks like what she is, Donald Trump’s third trophy wife.  Heidi Cruz, on the other hand is a very nice, but normal looking lady who happens to be brilliant.  She is a senior executive at Goldman Sachs on leave of absence.  If this becomes a contest between potential first ladies, Trump loses big time.

The other was the suggestion by Cruz that police keep an eye on Muslim communities where there is evidence of radicalization.  The liberal left is too busy booing to notice the vast majority of people are standing up applauding, saying: “about time.”

But neither of these things are what triggered the change.  Instead it was the results in Arizona and Utah.  I took a close look at Arizona and the numbers are shocking.  Over 50% of the vote was early voting.  That is why Marco Rubio, who was not even in the race, got 13.8% of the vote.  It is safe to assume that very few of those votes were cast on Election Day.  So I went back and took out the votes for Rubio, Carson and Bush who had all withdrawn from the race.  There were numerous reports that Donald Trump was doing very well in the early votes.  Cruz was far behind.  Once I did the analysis it became clear that on election night Cruz and Trump were in a virtual dead heat and if Kasich wasn’t in the race Cruz would have won by a comfortable margin.  I am sure the real experts figured out the exact same thing.  This race has changed fundamentally and right now it is Cruz who has the big mo.

That was reinforced by recent polls that show Trump and Cruz tied nationally, for the first time and which show Cruz ahead in Wisconsin.  In addition, a lot of people hate the establishment, but when people like Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney say that Trump is fundamentally unsuited for the Presidency, that is hard to ignore.  There is a big difference between not liking someone and saying someone lacks the character to be President of the United States.  In addition even Democrats are appalled at the prospect of choosing between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  There are five people still theoretically in the race, but only Ted Cruz is a viable alternative to either Trump or Clinton.  That changes everything.  It has already changed who is getting attention from the media.

TDM

Sometimes the most important headline is the one that doesn’t happen.  Last night the Drudge Report, which has morphed into a Donald Trump campaign media outlet, was boasting about Trumps big win in Arizona and saying Utah results were coming.  Then the Utah results did come in and now Drudge is reporting on the terrorist attack in Brussels.  Drudge is no longer crowing about the election yesterday.

There is a reason for this.  Trump did win big in Arizona, but people who were paying attention noticed something important.  Donald Trump under performed in Arizona by a big margin.  A lot of pundits were predicting that Trump would finally break the 50% barrier.  They knew he had a huge lead in the early voting.  A significant percentage of the votes in Arizona were cast long before last night.  For example, Marco Rubio got 13.4% of the vote and he withdrew from the race on March 15^th.  Odds are almost all of those votes were cast before Rubio dropped out of the race.  This means Trump had a good election result, but he did not necessarily have a good result among those who voted last night.   If a candidate doesn’t start getting over 50% at some point, they are doomed to lose.  Trump has yet to break that barrier.  His best chance was last night and he came up short.

In addition pundits were saying that if Ted Cruz did not get 50% of the vote in Utah that he would have to drop out.   They were shocked to see that Cruz got close to 70% of the vote and Trump came in third.  You are going to hear more about Ted Cruz in the next two weeks than you have heard in the last six months.

It is no coincidence that Jeb Bush endorsed Cruz this morning.   There is a lot of pressure from the Republican establishment demanding Kasich get out of the race.  It is obvious that Kasich has zero chance of winning, but he could possibly give the nomination to Donald Trump.  The Republican establishment despises Ted Cruz, but it is brutally clear that the only choice is between Cruz and Trump.   Lindsey Graham said choosing between Trump and Cruz was like choosing between being shot or poisoned.  The Republican establishment chose poison.    They may hate Cruz, even more than they hate Trump, but they realize Cruz is up to the job.  They do not think that Trump has the character or maturity to be President of the United States.

Every time Kasich or one of his surrogates is interviewed by any media outlet, the first question is whether or not Kasich is going to withdraw.  The money is already disappearing.  When a candidate has to explain why he is still in the hunt, he isn’t.

TDM

In 1965 the Lovin’ Spoonful released their debut album called “Do You Believe in Magic.”  One of the songs on that album, written by John Sebastian, was “Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?”

The Lyrics to that song are more than appropriate today:

“Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Pick up on one and leave the other one behind
It’s not often easy, and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did you ever have to finally decide?
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There’s so many changes, and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide?”

Tuesday, March 15, 2016 changed everything. Rubio has officially withdrawn. Kasich is still in the race, but he will no longer be a factor. This is now a two man race.  Republicans have a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  They may not like either candidate, but those are the only options.  No one is pretending that John Kasich has any rational path to the nomination. The one thing every pundit agrees on today is that a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.  Kasich cannot win, but he can prevent Ted Cruz from winning. This means one way or the other, people are going to vote for or against Donald Trump.

There is no way to predict the outcome.  Donald Trump has already exceeded everyone’s expectations.  But, then, so has Ted Cruz.  Trump has won most elections, but he has never gotten more than 50% of the vote and in most states he is closer to 30% than he is 40%.  If Trump can increase, even a little, he wins.  If that does not change, Cruz wins. In the next couple of weeks people will have to make a choice.

This won’t take long.  It all starts next week in Arizona. This is a closed primary.  It is winner take all.  There are 58 delegates.  If Trump wins, it is hard to imagine Cruz recovering.  If Cruz wins the race is on.

TDM

Donald Trump is celebrating as well he should.  But in reality this election, once again, showed why he is unlikely to be the Republican nominee.  Here is what happened compared to the pre-election polls:

Donald Trump basically performed almost exactly as expected.  The Trump ceiling is all too apparent.   Rubio surged slightly in Florida, which was expected, but not enough.  Kasich surged in Ohio, as expected but he didn’t surge anywhere else.  In every other state Cruz, including Illinois, Cruz beat Kasich by a huge margin.  Cruz surged in North Carolina and Missouri.  But now Rubio has dropped out and his votes will go somewhere.  Since Rubio despises Trump and since Kasich has zero chance, odds are they will go to Cruz.

Here is how last night might have looked if Rubio was not in the race:

Trump and Cruz would have tied in Florida, Cruz would have won Illinois and Missouri and North Carolina would have been very close.  Kasich still would have won Ohio. Does this put a little perspective on what really happened last night?

Now let’s look at the delegate count.

Trump: 621, Cruz:  396, Rubio: 168, Kasich: 138.  The total number of delegates chosen so far is 1,323 or slightly more than half of total 2,473 total delegates available.

Trump needs another 619 or 49.8% of those remaining. Cruz needs 841, or 69% of those remaining.  Kasich has zero chance of winning enough delegates.  Smart voters will realize that a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump. The problem is that people dumb enough to support John Kasich now are likely to be dumb enough to continue to support him.  .

All this is very misleading because of the sleeping bear, California. California has 173 delegates.  Most of them will go to the winner.  If Ted Cruz wins California, this is far from over.  If Donald Trump wins California, he wins the nomination.  Brace yourself for an unprecedented barrage of political ads.

Trump will try to morph into the statesman and get Republicans to unite behind him. He will start to embrace the Republican establishment and move to the center.  Left to his own devices, he will destroy himself.

Of course the Republican establishment is far too stupid to allow that to happen.  They will viciously attack Trump and save him from himself.  The Republican establishment is arrogantly saying they, not the voters, get to choose the nominee.  John Kasich will continue to dream the impossible dream that he can deny both Trump and Cruz the nomination and win the prize in a brokered convention.  That would result in the worst general election nightmare in the history of the Republican Party.

Both are ignoring the obvious.  Unless something changes, in most states, Kasich does not siphon enough votes away from Cruz to matter.  Last night he only came close to 20% of the vote in Illinois, where he should have been very strong.  Even in Illinois, without Rubio, it probably would have been a dead heat between Trump and Cruz with Cruz slightly ahead.  There are no more states like Florida and Ohio.

John Kasich looks awful, sounds awful and is openly embracing the failed Republican establishment policies that have infuriated the vast majority of Republicans.  The arrogance of a man consistently getting less than 10% of the vote in most states believing he is the people’s choice is mind boggling.  What is even more disgusting are the Republican establishment clowns, like Paul Ryan, openly dreaming of being the draft candidate at a broken down convention.

I do not know who will be the Republican nomination, but I can easily predict this.  If Donald Trump wins this will be a very scary general election.  He could win, but he could also lose in a landslide.  If it is someone other than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the Republican Party will have finally succeeded in destroying itself.  It will be impossible for me, and a lot of other people, to continue to support the Republican Party.  When Republicans are indistinguishable from Democrats, what is the point?  I think a third party will become the only alternative.

Sadly, this will all take place during an election year when if the Republicans had united behind anyone of the 17 original candidates and avoided the silly season they would have run the table.

TDM

No one is quite sure why Chicago is called the Windy City.  Some blame it on the windy politicians primarily for bragging about Chicago.  One would note that there is a lot less bragging now.  Others blame it on the wind caused by the high buildings.  Even on calm days there are some places where downtown Chicago is still pretty windy.  Anyone familiar with baseball understands the significance when the wind is blowing out at Wrigley.

Chicago is also famous for demonstrations and riots.  This is now exactly new.  Fort Dearborn was constructed on what is now the corner of Michigan and Wacker.  The fort was built to tell the Indians who was now in charge.  In 1812 Fort Dearborn was abandoned and the Indians responded by killing many of the evacuees in the Ft. Dearborn Massacre.  There have been other events, like the Haymarket protest.  Most of us are familiar with the protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic convention.  It should be no surprise to anyone that Donald Trump ran into significant protests in Chicago.  It is what they do.  Chicago is famous for protests.  The Chicago police are famous for handling protests.

The primary blame belongs to the people who organized the protests.  Freedom of speech is not just confined to liberals.  These protests were orchestrated by the far left.  That is why you never see such crap at a Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton campaign.  They get protestors, but it is typically one or two people.  In Chicago this was a well-organized effort that successfully shut down a major event.

The sad truth is that Donald Trump poured fuel on the fire.  His primary strategy has been to ignore political correctness and insult almost everyone.  While it is refreshing with regard to some of the political correctness insanity, Donald Trump crossed the line on numerous occasions.  He did encourage people in his crowd to get physical with protestors.  Contrast that with George W. Bush who always responded to protestors by saying he was glad to live in a country that honored free speech.

These protests may even help Trump, for a while.  But eventually people will grow weary of the nonsense.  It is really unfortunately that Trump cancelled that rally in Chicago because now the protestors think they have won.  We can expect more and more of this in the future.  If Trump wins the nomination, it will be a long, hot and very ugly summer.

In the short run, this is likely to help Trump.  That is the problem with Trump.  Everything seems to help him in the short run.  In the long run, the country is likely to have a world class case of buyer’s remorse.  The only question is when?  If we are lucky it will be before the Republican nomination is sewn up.  If we are unlikely it will be during the general election.  We better all hope this doesn’t happen after we elect Donald Trump to be President of the United States.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day.  There are no accurate polls, since most of them are based on surveys taken before the debate and he Chicago protests.  Trump should win everywhere, but that is what people predicted before Super Tuesday.  So far all the predictions have been predictably unpredictable.

TDM

There are two things certain after any debate.  One is that the professional pundits will get it wrong.  The other is that the real impact of a debate never shows up immediately.  Sad to say, the Fox News panel was actually worse than CNN.  That is incredible when one considers the pathetic liberals that dominate CNN.

For weeks we have watched the Republican establishment attack Donald Trump, only to make him more popular.  Yet the recommendation was always to attack Trump.  The more people attacked Trump the bigger he looked.  Rubio, in an act of desperation, listened to this advice and attacked Donald Trump with disastrous results.  Yet, again tonight there was Charles Krauthammer saying that Rubio and Kasich missed an opportunity to attack Trump.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Donald Trump did appear more Presidential tonight but I am not sure that helped him.  A large part of the appeal for Donald Trump is that he was the politically incorrect outsider who fought off his attackers.  He was always the most out of control guy in the room and voters furious with the establishment absolutely loved it.  Well tonight the fighter never showed.  Instead we saw a kinder, gentler Donald Trump.  The result was that Trump stumbled badly on important issues.  When Trump gets into an adult policy debate with Ted Cruz he loses badly.

So how bad was this.  Perhaps we can take a clue from the Drudge Report.  A lot of people have noticed that the Drudge Report has been very favorable to Donald Trump.  I always checked the instant poll on Drudge after every debate and in every case Trump was the big winner.  At times was almost shocking because to me Trump was acting like a spoiled eighth grader.  But his supporters loved it and he typically won the instant poll by huge margins.  Ted Cruz usually came in a distant second, at around 20%.  Rubio always came in just below Cruz and no one else mattered.  Tonight the results were very different.  Donald Trump still won, but by a much smaller margin.  Approximately 49.5% percent of people thought Trump won the debate, but this time 43.5% thought Cruz won.  Rubio and Kasich barely registered with 3.75% saying Rubio won and 3.14% saying Rubio won.

This is not a scientific poll; it just measures people who read the Drudge Report and then vote.  But the enormous change in results is still significant.  There is no doubt that Donald Trump did a lot worse, Cruz did a lot better and Rubio and Kasich were considered irrelevant.   I was surprised because I thought Rubio had a really good night, but I suspect the results reflect the obvious fact that Rubio has no chance at winning the nomination.

How will the new Trump play?  No one knows for sure.  All we know is that things have changed.

TDM

If you watched the news last night, you probably believe Donald Trump has sewn up the Republican nomination.  That would certainly be true if the only voters were liberals in the main stream media and the pundits on Fox News.  But the facts paint a very different picture.  At every stage in this election all of the pundits have over-estimated Donald Trump and/or John Kasich and/or Marco Rubio. At every stage in this election cycle, all of the pundits have underestimated Ted Cruz.  At every stage they have been wrong.  At some point they might want to look at the actual data.

What happened last night is nothing short of a huge strategic setback for Donald Trump.  He won the battle, in that he won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.  He is likely to win more battles, like in Florida and Ohio.  But ultimately he is going to be defeated, because Ted Cruz is beating the only people left capable of giving Donald Trump the nomination; John Kasich and Marco Rubio.

Rubio is finished after last night.  It is so bad that he would be smart to drop out of the race and endorse Cruz before the Florida primary.  Otherwise he is doomed to a humiliating defeat in his own state. John Kasich has come in second in one state and third in another.  In every other state he has trouble reaching double digits.  He has admitted that his goal is to prevent Trump or Cruz from winning so he can get the nomination in a brokered convention.  That is beyond delusional.

Cruz beat Kasich and Rubio in every state.  Only in Michigan was it even close. Kasich spent a fortune in Michigan, he practically lived there during the last couple of weeks and the airways were flooded with anti-Trump and anti-Cruz ads.  Cruz was sick all week and only showed up in Michigan just before midnight on Monday night.  All the pundits thought Kasich would do very well and that he might even beat Trump.   He didn’t even beat Cruz.  Rubio lost everywhere.

In case anyone is impressed with the 47.3% total by Trump in Mississippi, remember that Mississippi is another open primary state.  So is Michigan.  Odds are pretty high that a majority of Republicans did not vote for Donald Trump.  In Mississippi, Hillary was obviously going to win the Democratic primary by a huge margin.  It would be very tempting for Democrats to cross over and vote for Donald Trump, since they view him as the worst possible choice for Republicans.

Numerous polls show that Donald Trump’s unfavorability ratings are sky high.  The following NBC/WSJ poll is demonstrates the problem:

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/09/majority-of-american-voters-say-trump-is-harming-gop/21324972/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D544807410

“Although Donald Trump is leading the Republican horse race, a majority of American voters believe his comments on the campaign trail are insulting; 6 in 10 say he’s harming the Republican Party’s image; and nearly two-thirds have a negative opinion of him — making Trump the most unpopular figure in the poll.”

Even more devastating is the following conclusion: “What’s more, just half of Republican primary voters — 53 percent — say they’d be satisfied with Trump as the party’s presidential nominee.”

If these numbers are accurate, and they sure look to be accurate, Trump is likely to suffer a humiliating defeat in November.  He literally may be the ONLY Republican in the field capable of losing to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

How did this happen?  The answer is quite easy.  People really are that disgusted with the Republican establishment.  Trump feeds off that anger. When Mitt Romney hammered Donald Trump with cold hard facts, all people heard was another Republican establishment figure telling them how to feel.  People are sick and tired of the cultured elite in both parties arrogantly ignoring ordinary citizens.  They are sick and tired of people pretending to share our values only to compromise them away as soon as they get elected.

The good news is that there are two anti-establishment candidates and one of them is NOT Donald Trump.  If this is not a two man race today, it will be a two man race after next Tuesday. Neither John Kasich nor Marco Rubio has any chance of winning the nomination.  That is even more obvious today than it was yesterday. It will be undeniable after next Tuesday.

It is quite simple, except to the so-called experts.  After next Tuesday, voters will have a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  Unless the 60 to 65% of people who consider Donald Trump to be unqualified to be President change their mind, Ted Cruz is going to start winning everywhere.  Even better news for Cruz is that the Republican establishment is not trying to help.  If the Republican establishment just goes home and shuts up, Cruz has a very good chance of winning this.  Sometimes, “Silence is Golden.”

TDM

The next two weeks are going to be interesting.  The Trump campaign is hoping to run the table and seal the deal.  They may run the table, but it won’t seal the deal.  The Republican establishment is praying that John Kasich wins in Michigan and Ohio so he can become the establishment alternative to Trump.  The Rubio camp appears to be preparing for bad weather.  The polls are all over the place and it is impossible to predict much.  In addition, there are not a lot of polls.

Fox News is desperately pushing a Kasich surge in Michigan.  They are predicting the voters will respond to the kinder, gentler Republican establishment governor.  They are praying that voters turn away from the bitter rhetoric of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  They have given up on Rubio.

Best case for Trump would be to win big in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho and then win in Florida and Ohio.  The pundits will announce that the race is over and Trump has this sewn up.  The Cruz campaign will be silently celebrating because they know the opposite is true.  This would result in both Kasich and Rubio dropping out of the race.  If they drop out and this becomes Trump vs Cruz, the most likely result is that Ted Cruz easily wins most of the remaining states and gets more than enough delegates to win the nomination.

Best case for Cruz is that he wins in Mississippi and Idaho and he comes in second in Michigan, Florida or Ohio.  Obviously if he won any of the big three states it would be huge but while that is possible it is far from likely.

Worse case for the Republican Party and for the country is that Kasich wins in Michigan and Ohio and Rubio wins in Florida.  That would almost certainly result in no one winning the nomination outright and a chaotic Republican convention.  That would be unlikely to end up well.

Fox News has given up on Rubio and is now pushing Kasich.  Once again they are grossly underestimating the anger toward the establishment in both parties.  John Kasich is a nice guy, but he is a typical compassionate conservative Republican RINO who will almost instantly compromise with Democrats in their mission to pave the road to disaster.  Most Republicans have figured that out, which is why Kasich has trouble getting north of 10% if most states.  The only chance for Kasich to get the nomination is if neither Trump nor Cruz gets enough votes during the primary elections and the convention unites behind Kasich.  He openly dreams of this.  It is easily the worst case scenario for the Republican Party and the country.

TDM

The results from yesterday’s primaries and elections are astonishing.  Once again, most of the main stream media missed it.  They did notice that Ted Cruz won in Kansas, Maine and Kentucky.  But they still consider Trump to be the leader.  They failed to grasp the significance of this wave election.  Cruz out performed by a big margin everywhere.  Donald Trump underperformed everywhere.  Rubio didn’t come close to beating Cruz in any state.  John Kasich isn’t even showing a pulse.

In addition, this analysis by the Washington Examiner shows that if it wasn’t for early voting, Cruz might have won in Louisiana too.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-louisiana-tells-us-the-most-about-trump/article/2585069

Results Saturday:

Trump           Cruz          Rubio               Kasich

Alaska                                 33.5              36.4           15.1                   4.1

Kansas                                23.3              48.2           16.7                 10.7

Kentucky                             35.9              31.6            16.4                 14.4

Louisiana                             41.4              37.8            11.2                  6.4

Maine                                   32.6              45.9            12.2                  8.0

Trump’s support is a mile deep but an inch wide.  Cruz’s support is an inch deep but a mile wide.  Anyone paying attention realizes that this is now a two man race.  Neither Rubio nor Kasich have any chance at winning this.  A brokered convention is a futile dream by a Republican establishment desperately clinging to the illusion it still matters.  The most certain thing in this election is that Republicans are revolting against the Republican establishment.

The Cruz campaign is already running on a single message.  A vote for Marco Rubio or John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump. That is likely to resonate with voters everywhere, including places like Michigan, Florida and Ohio.  Cruz doesn’t even need to win in any of those three states; he just needs Rubio and Kasich to lose.  If they finish behind him it will be even better.  The delegates in Michigan, Florida and Ohio are nice, but there are more than enough delegates remaining for Cruz to easily win the nomination.  It seems obvious that if Rubio and Kasich drop out of the race the majority of their support will go to Cruz, not Trump.  If that is true, Cruz could start running the table after March 15.

There is something else.  I am not sure that Donald Trump even wants to be President.  I think he wants to win, but I am not sure he wants the job.  He obviously respects Cruz and he has already blown up the Republican establishment.  He will still try to win, because he is a pure bread competitor, but if he loses to Cruz, he can go back to his former life style of the Rich and Famous basking in the glow of doing very well in the ultimate contest.  Cruz, on the other hand, wants the job.  Cruz is on a mission to save this country from what he views as total disaster.  Cruz actually believes this may be our last chance to stop the descent into madness.

In any event, yesterday changed everything.  I wonder how long before the people at Fox News figure this out.  We can be certain that the rich guys who finance things like Presidential elections have definitely figured this out.

TDM