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  So I went back and took out the votes for Rubio, Carson and Bush who had all withdrawn from the race.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