Two remarkably impressive candidates (and Ben Carson, who’s whatever) made dazzling impressions Wednesday night at CNN’s town hall. Meanwhile, Donald Trump rode in his clown car for an hour on MSNBC.

Marco Rubio staged a master class on reformist conservative policy in one of the most substantive presentations on American politics ever broadcast on television.

For his part, Ted Cruz eloquently staked his claim to the mantle of anti-Establishment conservative confrontationalism and hammered home his arguments against Rubio’s supposed prevarications on immigration and Trump’s ludicrous lawsuit against him for running an attack ad.

Meanwhile, sitting with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Trump blathered incoherent, solipsistic nonsense and even admitted (at a confused moment) that he supported the retention of ObamaCare.

But hey, guess who’s going to win in South Carolina on Saturday?

The tragedy of the 2016 race in the Republican Party was on manifest display in the stark and horrifying contrast between the MSNBC comedy special and the two tours de force (and Carson, who’s nice) on CNN.

We all talk about what a great communicator Trump is, and clearly there’s something to that, but what’s also true is he can’t complete a coherent sentence on any substantive matter.

He even claims we are losing some kind of trade war with Japan, a nation that has been in the economic doldrums for 25 years. It’s hard to listen to him if you know, like, anything.

Cruz and Rubio are among the most impressive explicators of policy and politics in recent American history.

Rubio is the man with the silver tongue who revels in spelling out how the conservative ideas he champions are going to improve the lives of ordinary people — and how the foreign and defense policies he favors are going to enhance American security and prestige.

Cruz is the man who says to conservatives, “I am you.” He systematically checks off his support for hot-button social issues. He aggressively promises to “blow up” or “tear to shreds” or “destroy” the executive actions undertaken by President Obama.

He stoutly defends his unpopularity among his Senate colleagues as a mark of his determination to stand for principle against sellouts who blow in the wind.

They are almost exactly the same age, share Cuban parentage, and won surprise races for the Senate running to the right of more mainstream Republican candidates in successive election years.

They agree on many things domestically, and both champion a nationalist foreign policy.

But there are stark differences between them that offer GOP voters a true and substantive choice.

The key differences are actually stylistic, and go to the question of how the Republican Party can win.

Cruz argues that he will ignite the innate conservatism of the electorate and bring voters together as Ronald Reagan did in 1980 — and his fire will forge the bonds.

Rubio ended his 45 minutes with a specific promise to serve as the president even of those people who did not vote for him — a clever dig at Obama, but also an implicit argument that he can reach out from the Republican coalition to others in the middle and get them to the polls on Election Day.

But so what? Rubio and Cruz are losing to Trump. The GOP electorate is surrendering its commitment to conservative ideas in its desire for a strong man who makes ridiculous promises about making us great again that he has no idea how to fulfill.

The next six weeks are either going to represent a rebirth of electoral conservatism at the national level or its death knell.