The Texican Stand-Off

That Guy On The Right Is Trump's Intern. Trump Executed Him Seconds After The Picture Was Taken. FIRED! BLAM!!

The narrative now is that Trump is winning in the polls--which is awful--but it keeps Ted Cruz down--which is good. On the other hand, it's smothering Rubio--which is bad. But Trump can't last--which is good.

The Frogurt is also cursed.

Erick Erickson thinks that Karl Rove has thrown in with Dr. Ben Carson because it'll stop Carson's support from bleeding to Cruz. He might be right--apparently with Cruz, it's personal. To know him is to hate him (at least for a lot of people).

The house of cards has a few points holding it up.

• The first is that the 3%-ers (Fiorina, Christie, Paul, Kasich, Fiorina) don't want to drop out before New Hampshire--because whoever bails gives up their 3% and if someone got all of it, they'd catapult over BUSH! That's worth hanging on to. So they're down there holding about 10% of the vote.
• Then there are the sane choices: Cruz, Rubio, and . . . erm . . . uh . . . Jeb. Jeb only has around 6%--but together they're holding about 35% and Rubio and Cruz are tied. This means that unless Jeb loses his nerve they're going to be fighting it out until Florida.
• Finally there's Trump and Carson. Until recently these guys were holding 50% of the polling cards and while Trump has all kinds of issues, Carson has (had?) some of the highest favorables in existence. Trump just had raw numbers--but boy did he (does he) have raw numbers. One more point here: When going after Trump, dig one grave--yours. No one, including the Koch brothers (who are way, way richer than he is) want to take him on. Fear of getting Trumped is problematic: it makes it so no one wants to be the first into the breach in a real fashion.

The Carson Collapse

The situation is "stable" so long as something dramatic doesn't happen--like a candidate polling at 3% or above dropping out or . . . Carson's polling collapsing. He's suffered a decline--for certain. He's now tied with Rubio and Cruz in HuffPo's aggregator. In RCP's more staid measure, Carson is second--but falling fast.

In any event, this shake-up could, and maybe should do something to the race. This brings us to:

Trump: Go After Terrorists Families!

Trump wants to "get medieval" on ISIS's ass. He's willing to not just kill them where they live--but he will go after their families too. Never mind that many of their families live in, like the UK, Trump will hit them where they live! If anyone expects this to damage him, you can forget that notion. Trump's gonna get +5 points in the polls for that. 

Keep in mind that Trump fact checkers have found nothing he has said to be actually "true."

Half True Ain't So Bad, Is It?

The point here is that Trump continues to up the ante and it's working. This leads to articles like:

• When is Marco Rubio Supposed to Start Winning Primaries? A good question. He leads betting markets but . . . when . . . does he actually start winning?
• The GOP Might Really Nominate Donald Trump. That Would Be a Disaster.Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton in a landslide. Probably? True.

The key, though, is that so long as Trump is willing to go where angels fear to tread, his followers--and probably even more of them--will rush along behind him. If the establishment backs Carson--to keep Cruz down--that helps Trump. If Trump makes it into the primaries (which seems pretty much a given at this point) and . . . wins . . . then he's going to have Trumpmentum.

If he has Trumpmentum, it's OVAH.