Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina was not quite the train wreck for the not-Trump portion of the party that seemed likely after New Hampshire’s multi-candidate pileup. Boosted by Nikki Haley’s endorsement, Marco Rubio basically saved his campaign with a second-place finish, while Jeb Bush finished far enough back that dropping out became the only honorable option. That consolidation meant that notwithstanding Donald Trump’s victory, it wasn’t nearly as good a night for him as New Hampshire: The field narrowed, the party’s leadership accelerated its rally around Rubio, and the emerging three-way battle between Trump, Rubio and Ted Cruz, while still better for the Donald than a two-man race, isn’t the pure gift to him that the old Christie-Jeb-Rubio-Kasich combination offered.

But of course Kasich is still in the race, and showing no signs of departing. (Indeed, he just picked up a billionaire backer.) I haven’t ever written about his path to the nomination, mostly because I’ve never thought he had one. But then again this year has defied reasonable expectations, so here goes an unreasonable scenario: Kasich becomes the nominee by first having Trump run the table in the South on Super Tuesday, thus effectively killing off Ted Cruz and putting Rubio back on life support; then Kasich narrowly beats Trump in Michigan and Ohio and Illinois on March 8 and 15th while Rubio loses Florida to the Donald, ending the Florida senator’s hopes; and then, with Trump ascendant, Kasich becomes the last-hope choice of every not-Trump voter and donor and runs the table in the blue state primaries in April.

Sound plausible? No, not really, because it basically assumes that the Ohio governor can disappear for two weeks, losing state after state by huge margins, and then rebound with a series of very big wins. I would compare it to Rudy Giuliani’s Florida strategy in 2008, except that Giuliani actually led in national polls; Kasich … does not. And even in what should arguably be his best Super Tuesday state, the somewhat New Hampshire-esque and moderate Vermont, he’s currently tied with Rubio, polling at 14 percent to Trump’s 33 percent. If that’s as close as he gets to a victory on Super Tuesday, while Trump is winning basically everywhere and knocking Cruz and Rubio to the canvas, then the Donald will easily trounce Kasich in the Rust Belt and Midwest a week later. On the other hand, if Trump doesn’t become a juggernaut and Rubio and Cruz pick off a few states, then there’s no oxygen for Kasich, period, and he’ll go down to defeat with the same 10 percent of the vote he’s getting now — still enabling Trump along the way.

Unless Kasich is angling for a vice-presidential spot on a Trump ticket — and yes, anything is possible — that doesn’t seem like a particularly sensible way to close out a long and impressive political career. At the same time, on an instinctive level you can see why he wants to hang around rather than deferring to Rubio’s better odds: He beat Rubio in New Hampshire, he would probably beat Rubio head-to-head if they were the only two candidates running in the Midwest and Northeast, he is (on paper) slightly more electable in a general than Rubio, and (oh yes, by the way) Rubio is himself losing to Trump at the moment. Why not me? is the most powerful feeling in every politician’s gut, and thus far nothing Rubio has achieved has dumped the antacids necessary to put Kasich’s version to sleep.

Which is why, as a few people have already suggested, Rubio should offer him the vice presidential slot right now.

Over the weekend, Larry Sabato and his co-writers had the most detailed version of this pitch, complete with a historical precedent from the G.O.P. past:

Now that Bush is out, Rubio might want to consider a daring gambit — openly offering Kasich the vice presidential slot in exchange for the Ohio governor’s support. (Ronald Reagan did something similar much later in his 1976 campaign, right before the Republican convention, and while it didn’t work out, Reagan shook up conventional wisdom. It is a tactic worth considering.) If Rubio can somehow push Kasich out after Bush’s exit, it seems reasonable to think that the lion’s share of their supporters would go to him, and in a three-way race, that could be enough for Rubio to start getting the victories he has failed to secure so far. However, Kasich seems inclined to continue to run, and the Republican power brokers who favor a Rubio-Kasich ticket probably won’t take the risks necessary to make this happen.

The obvious question, then: What would be in it for Kasich? Well, first off, being vice president has become a pretty important job in the last few administrations, so he would have a chance at gaining a prominence and influence that he’s simply not going to have as the erstwhile governor of Ohio. And if Rubio served two terms Kasich would still be younger than Joe Biden, whom many people wanted to run for president this year, so his presidential ambitions might still have a chance of being satisfied.

Clearly being Rubio’s Biden is not nearly as good a deal as being the actual Republican nominee this year; that goes without saying. But relative to just going home after being one of Trump’s enablers, it looks pretty good to me.

Then what’s in it for Rubio? Well, most obviously, Kasich stops being a rival for the not-Trump vote and becomes an instant ally. But then, maybe somewhat less obviously, Kasich is a pretty reasonable vice-presidential pick for Rubio no matter what. Yes, a lot of prominent Republicans were salivating over the idea of a Rubio-Haley ticket when the two shared a stage in South Carolina — so much youth and multiculturalism! But as the rise of Trump has made amply clear, prominent Republicans don’t necessarily understand their own party’s situation, and particularly the fact that the future of the G.O.P. still depends on a demographic that’s associated with the uncool past: Middle aged, working class white people in the Midwest and the Scots-Irish belt.

Those are voters that a moderate-conservative Yinzer like Kasich is a lot better positioned to reach than most other potential Rubio veeps, and they’re also the kind of voters who are likely to find Kasich’s presence on a Rubio ticket reassuring strictly on age, experience and resume grounds, in the way that Biden (yes, arguably) helped reassure voters that it was safe to elect a different one-term senator to the presidency eight years back. (Indeed, speaking personally for a moment, I would be more reassured by a Rubio-Kasich ticket than I would by Rubio-Haley, or Rubio and any other politician under fifty.)

Of course Kasich has various weaknesses, too, including a propensity for self-righteousness and a Bidenesque tendency to make strange-sounding remarks. And by teaming up with him now Rubio would be sacrificing a lot of flexibility, making a pick without the luxury of vetting, giving up the free media attention that comes with a summertime choice of running mate —and, yes, implicitly conceding that he can’t beat Trump on his own.

But right now, he can’t beat Trump on his own. Even if his polling numbers rise into the thirties with endorsements and consolidation, if Cruz and Kasich and Ben Carson all stay in the race indefinitely his best-case scenario is a contested convention, and the worst case is, well, this Michigan poll as the final score in a Trump sweep. Relative to those possibilities, ceding his veep slot early doesn’t seem like a gamble with that much downside.

Now I realize that a primary season veep pick is the kind of “I need a column idea” pundit’s fantasy that never ever really happens. (That self-awareness is why this is a blog post and not a column.) But Donald Trump running for the Republican nomination, winning two of the first three contests, and leading in the polls is itself already a pundit’s fantasy, the kind of click-bait scenario you play around with during a boring campaign or a slow period for political news. So maybe the way to beat Trump is for his leading rivals to accept that somehow they’ve ended up inside a lazy columnist’s imaginary world — and act accordingly.