The article makes a penetrating point. But, it supposes Trump and Carson are going to go away.
Cruz - economic conservatives
Rubio - neo-conservatives
AND
Trump - populist conservatives
Carson - social conservatives
The Reagan conservatives included three of the above elements (with the populists then called “Reagan Democrats”). The neo-cons were given the Vice Presidency to buy them off. Even so, John Anderson bolted from the GOP to run as an independent for President.
My point is that Trump and Carson have staked out real constituencies in the Republican coalition and are not going away.
Cruz and Rubio have risen as the rest of the field has collectively fallen. But, do the math. Is there enough remaining support for the rest of the field for either Cruz of Rubio to catch up to either Trump or Carson?
The math says that this thing is going to Cleveland without being locked up. The last brokered convention was before Eisenhower, it appears that one is in the works now. As Henninger said in today’s WSJ.The caveat is that this is all based on polls, and the polls - as Michael Barone pointed out in today’s WSJ - have been getting flakier and flakier since people started abandoning landline telephones in droves.
Presumably lot of smoke will clear out after SEC Tuesday. Cruz could emerge from SEC Tuesday on close to an equal footing with Trump and Carson.
I do assume that Trump and Carson have peaked, but there are too many contenders for the other half of the vote to allow for a winner to emerge from the primaries. The wild card in negotiations in Cleveland will be the fact that Trump can self-finance; he seems to be the anti-JEB missile. GOPe can’t win with a threat to take their marbles and go home. They’ll have to give up a lot to get Trump to acquiesce to a deal; if Trump gets his juices up, there may not be enough to buy him off with. They should sell tickets to Cleveland.