Marco Rubio, indeed, looks like the last best hope for the establishment GOP, but that isn't saying a lot at this point in time. Let's looks ahead into the crystal ball of politics.
As the first primary caucus comes upon the country in three weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire, several candidates look like they are heading to their last hurrah. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum will simply not be competitive in either state and will drop out. Huckabee has already said failure there will end his campaign and Santorum is surely right behind Huckabee in the race to withdraw.
Ben Carson will not finish very high in either of these two races, but he does have the financial resources to hang in there through South Carolina and Nevada, so expect to see him continue, albeit for a brief period of time. The real question in regard to Carson is who will be the largest beneficiary of his supporters. More on this later.
Others certain to drop out after the New Hampshire vote will be John Kasich, Chris Christie, who has no national organization, Rand Paul, and Carly Fiorina.
The wild card coming out of New Hampshire will be Jeb Bush, who seems to have made New Hampshire his last stand. Bush has spent an inordinately large amount of money and time in New Hampshire and a failure there will surely force him to end his campaign, unless his ego gets the better of his good sense, assuming he has any good sense this far along in his failed campaign.
That leaves Trump, Cruz and Rubio left standing. It's at this point that the analysis comes about in breaking down who will be the biggest beneficiary of all the candidates who will have withdrawn.
The latest polling suggests that even with a distribution of the establishment votes from those candidates who have withdrawn, Rubio will still have an uphill climb to win the presidential nomination before the convention.
Trump and Cruz appear to be the two candidates that will be left to slug it out in the final rounds, although Rubio will be in it to the end. In the end, the GOP establishment will be left with two candidates that it absolutely abhors, but who have the power to put the GOP in its place and win the nomination. The GOP will then have to determine whether it will support Trump or Cruz going into the convention.
Now all this conjecture is predicated upon the Trump or Cruz campaigns avoiding suffering a catastrophic failure along the end of the campaign trail. I still see Ben Carson's supporters swinging to Ted Cruz, after what Trump has done to smear Carson. That could be what Cruz needs to push him into the lead and ultimate victory.
In the end, Rubio will have given it his best shot, but that will not be enough. In the year of the "outsider", it will be between Trump and Cruz, so get ready for an interesting finish to the GOP presidential nomination process filled with fireworks.
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