As I noted last night, Trump isn’t some sideshow or joke in the GOP nomination race. You may think he’s a joke personally. But he’s bringing to the fore the central issues and drives currently motivating Republican base voters. That doesn’t mean I think he’s going to be the Republican nominee, though. I’d say for the first time, in the last two or three weeks, he has opened up a real path to the nomination. But I would say it is still quite unlikely. That’s why the real race to watch right now is between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

As we’ve discussed a number of times over recent months, as much as I see Marco Rubio as green and not quite ready for prime time, by process of elimination he is now the most plausible and likely Republican nominee. For a long time, Jeb Bush held on to that slot, even though he was behind in the polls. But while nothing is impossible, his seeming inability to generate any traction really anywhere in the country, effectively takes him out of the running. (Kerry 2004 stands out as the big counter-example to this relative certainty about Bush – but the dynamics seem different to me.) Ben Carson is already fading. And Donald Trump, despite leading in a divided field, faces huge obstacles. That brings us to Ted Cruz.

Over the last two weeks, as Carson has begun to fade, Cruz has begun to move up both in Iowa and nationally. On paper, Rubio is a dream candidate for the 2016 GOP. In practice, I think he has a number of shortcomings. But Cruz is quite different. He’s visibly and openly hard-right whereas Rubio clothes very conservative positions in a softer shell. Cruz is also aggressive and grating personally.

I could definitely see Marco Rubio beating Hillary Clinton. I can’t see Ted Cruz beating Hillary Clinton.

Still, we’re dealing with a relatively small number of candidates who’ve shown any ability to gather GOP primary support. Basically it’s Trump, Carson, Rubio and Cruz. Outside those four there’s really no one who’s been able to get over 5% support, apart from a momentary, passing surge, such as Carly Fiorina briefly had after one debate. Jeb did. But he’s been falling for months and now seems stuck at about 5 percent nationally. It really comes down to a process of elimination.

A lot of people seem to think there’s such a thing as the “GOP establishment” which is or can come in and shut Trump down to avoid a catastrophe in the general election. What exactly about the fall or Eric Cantor, John Boehner or the last 4 or 5 government shutdown dramas makes people think such a thing exists or exists with anything remotely like the size and power to do something like that escapes me. As I said, I think Trump now has a path to the nomination. He probably won’t win Iowa. But he could well win New Hampshire. And if he does, he has in place a large enough and persistent enough national lead that he could do it.

I don’t see the “GOP establishment” coming in and shutting him down. What I think is that he’s maxing out a big slice of the GOP primary electorate. But he faces big obstacles in consolidating or getting the support of those not currently supporting him – money conservatives who are dubious about his tax orthodoxy, evangelicals who see him as a thrice-married, secularist poser, the small but influential nerd-brainiac wing of the party (lookin’ at you Bill Kristol) which is offended by his too open anti-intellectualism and refusal to cater to them. The so-called ‘establishment’ fits into this mix too. But not so much as an ‘establishment’ than yet another niche constituency he’ll have a hard time locking down. As long as he’s in a race with 7 or 8 people drawing non-trivial levels of support, his chunk of the electorate is huge. But eventually that will whittle down to one or two other people. It’s just a matter of how quickly that happens and what kind of numbers he can run up before it does. The people in the running to be that other person are Rubio and Cruz. And I’d bet that other person is the nominee.