After this Tuesday, every player on the stage of this American presidential political season will either take a stand or be exposed as an opportunist willing to let the divided house burn for some benefit. These players include not only the candidates themselves but also pundits and proxies who take to channels of social and mass media in the pursuit of relevance and influence. Perhaps more than anyone, Marco Rubio's political future will depend on his realization that he will not win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
By any metric of the primary process, Marco Rubio and John Kasich have no path to the Republican Party nomination. It stands to reason then that if Rubio and Kasich sincerely want to support conservative, constitutional, free-market American values in the coming executive election, they need to drop out of the race and leave the contest to the two front-runners, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. If Marco Rubio truly wants to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the GOP's nominee, the same Trump who loses in every poll to Hillary Clinton, then he must drop out and back Ted Cruz, who handily defeats both Trump and Clinton in one-on-one contests.
Fox News must also make clear that it is not in the tank for Donald Trump. The cable news network has allocated more time to Trump than to any of the other candidates. For the past two weeks, its televised pundits, with the exception of Megyn Kelly, have treated Trump with kid gloves if not outright approval. Furthermore, Fox has announced that coming GOP debate hosted by Fox will include Trump, Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio as debaters even though the latter two have no way of winning enough delegates through the primary process to even be considered for nomination. This violates Fox's own criteria for debate eligibility and effectively has Fox preventing the one-on-one contest that would have the best chance of resulting in unified support for a GOP front-runner going into the summer's party convention.
It is widely considered that Cruz would wipe the floor with Trump in a debate. Cruz has a far better grasp in the breadth of issues affecting the executive branch; he actually cites real numbers and cogent arguments in contrast to Trump's boasts and baseless reassurances of "knowing better than anybody" as Trump exhorts his audience to "Believe me" regarding each and every one of his self-serving claims. Conservatives who have been taken in by Trump's doublespeak need to see this.
The institution and office of President of the United States is bigger than any of its single human occupants. The system of government designed by the U.S. Constitution makes the office great by its very restrictions on the office. The best presidents in American history, including Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Coolidge, and Reagan, respected this. The worst presidents, such as Wilson, FDR, and Obama, who made of themselves demagogic, self-serving centerpieces, either ignored or defied this. Ted Cruz has clearly demonstrated his allegiance and deep familiarity with the Constitution. In contrast, Donald Trump has declared that, as president, he could issue illegal orders as commander-in-chief which would be obeyed. Trump has barely mentioned the Constitution throughout his candidacy.
This will be a fateful week for the American Experiment, as Jefferson called the U.S. enterprise of democratic, limited government. Even after the votes are counted, it will be up to central figures who claim to be patriots to prove their patriotism by removing themselves from the nomination process. In particular, Marco Rubio must make an historic, personal choice whether to benefit politically from prolonging his place in a competition he cannot win, and thereby delay the crucial head to head battle between Cruz and Trump; or whether to bow out and actively clear the path for Cruz to eliminate Trump. The former almost certainly results in a Trump nomination and a GOP defeat. The latter would unify the Republican party and likely result in the first truly conservative administration in almost thirty years. It would also make Marco Rubio the most heroic political figure of this political season.
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