We’ve all seen Marco Rubio’s kitchen sink strategy play out over the past week, as he and the Republican establishment throw anything and everything at Donald Trump while praying something sticks. This approach earned Rubio less than 20 percent of the delegates awarded on Super Tuesday and just a single state victory. Despite months of fawning press coverage and establishment support, there is no evidence Rubio can beat Trump and win the nomination. Polls have even shown him behind Trump in a hypothetical one-on-one race.
So if Rubio really believes in #nevertrump, what can he actually do to prevent Trump’s coronation? There’s only one answer: Drop out.
Contrary to long-held conventional wisdom, which has argued that the GOP should unite around just one anti-Trump candidate, the only remaining way to deny Trump a majority of delegates is to fight him on two fronts, not one. But it can’t be any more than two fronts, either. Republicans need Ted Cruz to squeeze Trump on one end, and John Kasich on the other. A Cruz/Kasich/Rubio opposition, however, is one candidate too many and essentially leaves Trump in a one-on-one battle with Cruz—which he’d be sure to win.
It’s a long-shot strategy, to be sure, but nothing Republicans have tried to date has worked. This just might. Here’s why—and why Kasich, and not Rubio, is the guy the GOP establishment needs to rally around.
Rubio has no Natural base of support
Northern Virginia, tucked inside Washington’s infamous Beltway, is the one part of America that could genuinely be considered “Rubio country.” But NoVa just voted and could only help Rubio to a second-place statewide finish. His own state has forsaken him, with polls showing Trump up in Florida by as much as 20 points. Rubio did win Minnesota Tuesday night, but that may have had as much to do with voters’ dislike of Trump and Cruz than any particular affection for Rubio. If anything, had Rubio not been on the ballot in Minnesota, his support might have readily transferred to Kasich, the other establishment-friendly candidate still in the race.
Kasich is best suited to defeat Trump in his weakest region, the Midwest
Now, if in fact most Rubio and Kasich supporters would be fine with either candidate, why not call on Kasich to drop out? Because Kasich actually has a chance to win his delegate-rich, winner-take-all home state of Ohio—he’s just barely behind Trump in recent polls. Those same polls have put Rubio in the low double digits in the Buckeye State. If he were to quit and his voters mostly broke toward Kasich, that would put Kasich in a better position to carry Ohio. By contrast, Kasich is faring poorly in Florida. Even if he bailed, Rubio would still almost certainly lose his own state.
But if Kasich can pull off an Ohio win on March 15, that could raise his profile enough so that he could plausibly carry other Midwestern states such as Wisconsin and Indiana, as well as neighboring Pennsylvania. Trump has won every state contested so far in the Northeast and every state in the South except Cruz’s home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma. But Trump is 0-for-2 in the Midwest, where many delegates are still left to be awarded.
Kasich hasn’t done particularly well in the Midwest so far, but if anyone can stop Trump there, it’d be him. But to even have a shot, he needs to win Ohio, and to win Ohio, he needs Rubio to get out of the way.
Only Cruz can compete with Trump in conservative STATES
Because Cruz draws his support from evangelicals and very conservative voters, we can see where he’ll be most competitive. As opposed to Kasich or Rubio, he can compete with and even beat Trump across the Great Plains, the Mountain West, and the remaining Southern states. Without Cruz, Trump would likely win all these states and easily rack up large delegate hauls.
No candidate can defeat Trump one-on-one
The reason no single candidate in the race can defeat Trump head-to-head is that the opposition to Trump comes from opposite ends of the party. The party’s more moderate/establishment wing strongly opposes Trump in favor of Rubio/Kasich, but it despises Cruz as much as it loathes Trump. The evangelical/conservative wing supports Cruz, but it’s unlikely to come out strongly for either of the establishment candidates, Rubio or Kasich.
Put another way, there’s no way to unite the conservative and “moderate” wings of the Republican Party under a single banner. And given that Trump’s current delegate lead is likely to grow between now and March 15, there’s almost no way one individual opponent can catch up to him.
Only a Kasich/Cruz teamUP can STOP Trump from winning an outright majority of delegates
Since neither Rubio, Cruz, nor Kasich can win a majority of delegates, there are only two possible conclusions to the Republican primary: Either Trump wins a majority of delegates, or no one does. In the latter scenario, where Trump only wins a plurality, Republicans would then have the chance to pick an alternative to Trump at their national convention. But with March 15 looming and the giant winner-take-all states approaching, how can Trump be stopped?
The answer is to let Cruz try to rack up delegates by appealing to conservatives, while just a single candidate goes after establishment-minded voters. And, as we’ve argued above, Kasich is much better positioned to be that person than Rubio.
If Rubio were to acknowledge this reality and drop out, Kasich and Cruz could unofficially divide up the remaining states. Kasich would focus on the industrial Midwest, mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Pacific coast. Cruz would focus on the South, Great Plains, and the Mountain States of the interior West. Some states would still go to Trump (New Jersey and New York for example), but if Kasich and Cruz can beat him in some key battlegrounds and hold down his delegate numbers in others, they could prevent Trump from getting a majority of delegates.
There’s no guarantee that this would work, of course, and its success likely relies on Kasich winning delegate-rich, winner-take-most California in June, a very difficult contest to predict at this point. But if Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz all contest states like California, Trump is all but guaranteed victory.
Therefore, if Rubio really believes stopping Donald Trump is the GOP’s most important objective, he should drop out. Your party needs you, Marco—it just needs you to go away.