Can #NeverTrump Republicans Unite Behind Ted Cruz? If there was a button that said, "press here to have Cruz be the nominee instead of Trump," I would press it instantly and without hesitation. Jonah notes, "the so-called Republican establishment is coming to the painful realization that Texas senator Ted Cruz may be its only hope to block Donald Trump from winning the nomination and Hillary Clinton from winning the White House." Are they capable of doing it? Presuming Rubio doesn't win Florida, are his supporters, and Kasich supporters, and currently undecided Republicans who preferred some other candidate capable of unifying behind Cruz? Yes, I know the polling indicates Cruz can do it: The exit polls in Michigan and Mississippi asked voters who they'd pick in a two-way race between Trump and Cruz, also giving them the option to say they'd sit out the race. Among Rubio voters, on average between the two states, about 75 percent said they'd still vote in a Trump-Cruz race, and of those, 80 percent would prefer Cruz to Trump. Kasich voters were somewhat more equivocal; 55 percent said they'd still vote, and of those, two-thirds would go to Cruz over Trump. Although this is the first time the exit polls have asked about one-on-one matchups, the results are consistent with national polls showing Trump losing ground as the field winnows, as well as exit polls in previous states showing Trump being unpopular with Republicans who aren't already supporting him. But it's been a particularly illogical year. We know Trump is withering and merciless when he attacks. What happens when he has just one target to focus his rage upon? The charge that Cruz was Canadian and ineligible to be president was idiotic and baseless, and yet somehow about a third of Republicans bought into the idea. What happens when Trump starts hammering on one of Cruz's genuine weaknesses? Fairly or not, there are a lot of people who just don't like Cruz. There's a reason most Republican officials endorsed Cruz's rivals and there's a reason it's taken so long for most of the Republican party to come around to Cruz. It's not just that they're all Georgetown cocktail-party elitists who see Cruz as too principled and a threat to their smug status. What's fascinating is the number of people who completely or almost completely agree with Cruz on the issues who still openly talk about him like they can't stand him. Ben Carson apparently is angry enough about the alleged Iowa rumor-mongering that he's willing to endorse Trump, the man who compared him to a child molester. You would think Cruz and Rick Santorum would hit it off; Santorum endorsed Rubio. Mike Huckabee accused him of practicing the "low-life, sleazy politics people truly get sick of." You would think Rand Paul and Cruz might be the same kind of prickly principled iconoclasts, and get along. Nope: "Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the Senate, and as a consequence he can't get anything done legislatively… He is pretty much done for and stifled, and it's really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem." Credit where it's due; Cruz managed to get Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry to endorse him. Is Cruz really so unlikeable that everyone is willing to send the conservative movement, the GOP, and the country through the chaotic damage of a Trump nomination or presidency? What You Missed If You Didn't Watch the Debate Last Night… The take on last night's debate… Do you notice how much better the debates seem with only four candidates? CNN went for substance, particularly in the opening half-hour, focusing on trade deals, legal immigration visas and entitlement reform. It was generally a good debate, but for the three trying to catch Donald Trump, I don't think they generated the buzz-worthy, "hey, did you see that?' moment they needed. Trump clearly wanted to be more "presidential" this week, and generally demonstrated a quieter, "kindler, gentler" tone. He opened and closed with his best argument -- no matter what you think of me, you want and need my voters checking the box for Republicans in November. In between, he was his typical train wreck, with some interesting wrinkles. He said that when he said the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square was a show of strength, he didn't mean it was a good thing. He clearly had no idea about the details of Cuba policy, talking in circles about how he would insist upon a "good deal." He insisted the violence at his rallies is all spurred by "bad dudes" who come in to cause trouble, and quickly tried to change the subject to saluting the police. He hates Common Core, and spoke about charter schools as if they were some new idea. After a while, you start to ask, "what is the point of asking questions to a pathological liar who doesn't know any details?" Did Rubio have a good debate? Yeah, but he's had good debates most of these nights except New Hampshire, and we see where that's gotten him. People will remember and quote the "I'm not interested in being politically correct, I'm interested in being correct" line for a long time. Maybe Rubio wins Florida on Tuesday and it's a new lease on campaign life. If not, this is his authentic, non-insulting self, his closing impression on the national audience. John Kasich had a genuine good moment, expressing incredulity to Trump's answer on Tiananmen Square. Beyond that, he seems to be cruising along just perfectly on his selected course to be President of Ohio. Then there's Ted Cruz, the man widely believed to be the last, best option for derailing Trump from getting the Republican presidential nomination. The Texas senator had a perfectly fine night, with a terrific moment where he observed voters making pledges to support Donald Trump at his rallies and noting that in America, the candidates should be making pledges to support the voters. Cruz has his head on straight, the right values in his heart, and the man preps like a samurai. But is that going to be enough, one-on-one, against the human hurricane that is Trump? Somebody Needed to Hit Kasich Earlier. Much Earlier. There will be a lot of recriminations about how this race turned out, but here's one point that may get missed easily: sometime in the past month, or even earlier, Marco Rubio needed to turn to John Kasich and make the case that the Ohio governor was an unacceptable standard-bearer for the Republican party. Kasich always ran far enough behind that attacking him always seemed like a waste of debate time and resources. But being the folksy, gosh-golly-gee, "back in Ohio" guy who never attacks anyone else works relatively well if everybody else gets nasty enough. And that's exactly what happened in the March 3 Detroit debate. Trump, Cruz, and Rubio got in a three-way brawl, and since then Kasich has won 437,215 votes and Rubio won 293,589. Kasich left the other guys to do the heavy lifting of attacking the frontrunner, and watched as people gravitated to him as the nice guy who's tired of these nasty negative attacks. Rubio -- or perhaps Jeb Bush, or anyone else who saw Kasich as stylistic competition --should have said something like… "One of the hardest challenges facing the Republican party is convincing people that there is no free lunch. You can't get something for nothing. The Democrats are always going to insist that they can promise the moon and someone else will pay for it. Look at Obamacare -- they promised lower premiums, you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor. And during this fight, not only did John Kasich buckle under the pressure and expand Medicaid in his state, over the objections of many of his state's Republicans, he contended that his critics didn't understand Christian charity, and smugly offered to buy Bibles for them. At the time we were trying to educate the American people on the full consequences of Obamacare -- the giant costs it would inflict on individuals and states in the long run -- Governor Kasich echoed the Democrats and insisted anyone who opposed adding a lot more people to the Medicaid rolls was cold-hearted and un-Christian. How condescending. How smug. How insulting. With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?" ADDENDA: This week was a really good one on the pop culture podcast -- brought to you by the NFL Free Agency Federal Witness Protection Program, safely relocating players to places like Jacksonville, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, or Buffalo, where most fans will never see them again. The great Mary Katharine Ham joins us to discuss the brutal sociological mating experiment that is ABC's The Bachelor. We also recap the highs and lows of CPAC, have a surprisingly impassioned disagreement about Erin Andrews's $55 million lawsuit against a stalker and a hotel management company; we try to find anything salvageable or funny in the Ghostbusters reboot trailer, and whether the joy of warm spring weather is offset by the hurricane of pollen that arrives with it.  | 
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