The establishment media, ever anxious to dumb down any issue or controversy to about the 8th grade level, now always presents the remaining Republican primary contests as a decision between Donald Trump and #NeverTrump.

But, as CHQ Chairman Richard Viguerie pointed out last summer, Trump and Cruz are the message carriers for the Republican grassroots – that’s why they are leading.

Likewise, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush et al are losing or are already out of the race because they have opposed that message by backing amnesty for illegal aliens, more and more spending and failing to make any effort to stop Obama’s anti-constitutional power grabs.

As of today (and this number will change after today’s votes) Trump has 460 delegates, Ted Cruz has 370, Marco Rubio has 163, John Kasich has 63 and Ben Carson has 8.

And Rubio and Kasich (and Bush while he was in) are not losing just because they are running ineffective campaigns – which they have and are – they’re losing because grassroots Republican voters soundly rejected the policies they campaigned on.

The math is pretty clear – the open borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, keep on spending America into the Third World, inside-the-Beltway Republican Party of Marco Rubio, John Kasich (and Jeb Bush) is losing and losing badly to the country class message carries – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

The question now before Republican voters, and especially those inclined to support the wishes of the Party elite in DC, is not Trump vs #NeverTrump, it is who can best unite all of the elements of the winning Republican coalition.

And as CHQ Chairman Richard Viguerie has pointed out on numerous occasions, that candidate is Ted Cruz.

As we look forward to the 2016 Republican primary and general election campaigns it is very important to look back at the 1980 campaign and remind ourselves how Ronald Reagan won.

As Mr. Viguerie documented in his book TAKEOVER, it wasn’t by compromising his principles with the progressive Republican establishment; it was by welding all the grassroots discontents with the Republican establishment into a new, and winning, conservative coalition.

Ted Cruz is in the process of doing the same thing in this election and that is, in the experience of my involvement of every Republican presidential campaign cycle from 1976 to 2012 the only way to win the Republican nomination and most certainly the only way to defeat Hillary Clinton and win the general election.

Prior to the rise of Ronald Reagan there were only two legs to the conservative coalition; national defense conservatives and economic conservatives. Reagan’s genius was to add cultural conservatives to that coalition making what had been a wobbly two legged ladder into a stable three legged stool.

Ted Cruz is the only candidate in this year’s primary field who can repeat that feat.

Senator Cruz has the record and the platform to bring together the three legs of the Reagan coalition; national defense conservatives, economic conservatives and cultural conservatives. He came to Washington on a wave of Tea Party support, and unlike Marco Rubio he did not abandon those principles once he got to DC.

Senator Cruz has also fought alongside the liberty movement on issues of privacy and constitutional liberty, and will attract most libertarian-leaning voters that establishment Republicans have alienated.

While Donald Trump’s flair for publicity has made him an effective message carrier for the frustrations of grassroots populist conservatives, his lack of discipline and his shoot from the hip commentary on issues of great constitutional weight – to say nothing of his anti-constitutional comments on eminent domain and property rights – leave many limited government constitutional conservatives concerned that a Donald Trump administration would be every bit as unconstrained by the Constitution as the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

As the results of elections of the past demonstrate, when Republicans run as conservatives, as they did in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 they win. When they go back on their promises to govern as conservatives they get thrown out of office, as President George H.W. Bush did in 1992 and the Hastert Congress did in 2006. And most importantly, when Republicans run as Democrats-lite, as they did in 1976, 1996, 2008 and 2012 they lose – big time.

The lessons of those campaigns should persuade every Republican and conservative voter that Ted Cruz is the only candidate who can credibly run for president as a full-spectrum conservative, build a winning right-of-center coalition AND who can be trusted to, without question, govern according to limited government constitutional conservative principles.

If Republicans do not nominate a candidate who is prepared to unite right-of-center voters around core limited government constitutional conservative principles, rather than a Reagan landslide we will face an electoral disaster of epic proportions that will elect Hillary Clinton as President, and be the end of constitutional liberty as envisioned by America’s founding generation.