BACK TO POLITICS, NOW THAT THE PATRIOTS ARE NO LONGER UNBEATEN

Those of you who, like me, are obsessing over the Republican presidential nomination race will have noticed some developments in recent days:  the rise of Ted Cruz in Iowa polls, the decline of Ben Carson, the increasingly acrimonious strife between the Cruz and Rubio camps, the signs of new life in the Christie New Hampshire effort, among other things.

How are we to think about this?  [It goes without saying that we cannot actually do anything about what will happen.]  Well, if you share my hope that Trump will either win the nomination or come close enough to destroy the Republican Party as it is now constituted, then the answer is simple.  It is all good.

Why?  Because the principal threat to the Trump campaign is the early and solid coalescing of the "establishment" vote behind one single candidate acceptable to the Super-Delegates at the Convention.  With Trump and Carson between them pulling 45-50% of the vote in the primaries, a single Establishment candidate could climb into first place in at least some primaries, in which case the rules for delegate apportionment, which I have explained several times, would favor him [it won't be Fiorina], just as they now favor Trump.  He would need only 700 or so earned delegates, because the lion's share of the 619 Super-Delegates would put him over the 1243 mark and secure the nomination.

However, the continued life and even success of two or three non-Trump/Carson candidates will split the available votes and allow Trump to rack up huge numbers of delegates despite pulling no more than 35-40% of the vote in any primary.

At this point, it appears that only Rubio, Cruz, and Christie have any legs.  Bush and Kasich are dead in the water and Fiorina, Gilmore, Graham, Pataki, Paul, Huckabee, and Santorum are polling less than the margin of error. 

Be still, my heart.