Fifteen primary and caucus contests are in the books on the GOP side and Senator Marco Rubio, the establishment’s great hope who in our view would represent the single most dangerous major party nominee since before World War II  has won just once. For those scoring at home that’s 6.7% of the contests have been won by the messiah on right. Senator Rubio’s simple soundbites and attacks on the patriotism of the sitting President have fallen flat even among conservatives. It is time he did the right thing and dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination. His one win tonight in Minnesota ironically means that Rubio carried GOPers in the state that has the single longest streak of backing Democrats in Presidential elections having last backed a Republican in Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972.

It is worth noting that Donald Trump, the actual GOP frontrunner (though no doubt a poll of GOP operatives and cable news talking heads would STILL yield Rubio as the favored candidate) is already shifting to the middle for the General Election campaign, speaking on Tuesday night about how great the airports and train systems are in places like Qatar and Europe (something I say just about everyday) and talking about redoing trade deals and shifting jobs back home – granted he has no tangible plans to do any of this, but the rhetoric was decidedly different than the race-baiting we’ve heard previously, though it was largely populism, protectionism and pride – perhaps the “3 P’s” of the Trump fall campaign.