Red indicates counties won by Trump. Tan is Cruz. Blue is Kasich. Purple is Rubio.
What color will Indiana be after May 3? That's the question the Republican Establishment must be asking itself. The answer to that question will probably not be what they would like to hear, yet everything in their current plan to keep control of the party has depended on it.
Trump must be stopped, and Cruz is their point man for now, so long as he can hold up. Will he?
To his credit, Cruz has turned lot of territory his hue across the country through dogged campaigning, but much of that territory is empty turf in the West. Although Kansas, Utah, and Maine are caucus states, which tend to skew towards certain party demographics and inflate percentages of victory, with the possible exception of Maine, one assumes Cruz might have won the primary in those states as well, as he did in Texas.
His support seems generally solid in areas of the country where George W. Bush ran strong as a cultural conservative. But his victory in the Wisconsin primary was due primarily to the massive ad blitz and get-out-the-vote effort in the Milwaukee suburbs, marshaled by the Wisconsin Establishment on his behalf.
Rubio had been the Establishment's previous favorite son, of course, but as the above map shows, his base of support was largely limited to liberal urban areas with few actual Republicans (Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington, D.C.), as well as college towns (e.g. Iowa City, Fayetteville, Ark.). This would have been super had he been running as a Democrat.
Kasich meanwhile has generated little traction outside his own fiefdom (see Rump Ohio) except for a pockets in New England early in the cycle. One legitimately wonders if he would still win those same counties today against Trump if Vermont voted again (let alone if Ohio did).
The problem for the Establishment is that contiguous grey area of the Northeast running from Rhode Island to West Virginia. Those states makes a block of over 300 delegates yet available for the taking. Most of those states votes in the next three weeks. None are caucus states. All delegates, except for a portion of those in Pennsylvania, will be allocated by a primary vote.
Take a look at the color of the counties abutting the big grey area. Extrapolation is no guarantee of accuracy, but is it hard to imagine that outside of pockets of pale yellow and blue, most of that area will be shades of red after the next month has passed? It would seem surprising if it turned out otherwise. Where would support for other candidate-colors come from at this point?
Likewise California (June 7). All the counties touching it are red, many of them dark crimson. Not good for Cruz. His support in the West drops off quickly the further one gets from Mormonland.
Then there is Indiana ith fifty-seven delegates, allocated winner-take-all on May 3. A victory by Trump would make up for the sixty-six he lost in Ohio and put him solidly in a position to go over the top of the halfway mark going into the convention.
The Establishment's battle plan for stopping Trump after Wisconsin no doubt depends on a defeat of Trump in Indiana by either Kasich or Cruz, or a combination of them together .
Given the map, Kasich's support across the Indiana-Ohio state line looks very shaky, even without his public meltdowns of late. He seems to have gone into a strange self-congratulatory delirium, acting like a man who was told by the Establishment just do this one thing for us---win your home state, and you will be rewarded.
His victory there is pretty much all that stands between Trump and a clear path to the nomination, but fact that he is not being put forth by the Establishment as the #NeverTrump alternative in New York State is telling of their confidence in him now.
Cruz seems the natural point man for the Establishment in the Hoosier State He took some counties in both Kentucky and Illinois, and was strong in pockets there, but ultimately lost both those states to Trump.*
Worst of all, in the last few days, Cruz seems to have responded to his victory in Wisconsin by effectively blowing his head off in public. To deep insider Establishment thinking, this surely validates their early distrust of him. It proves to them just how important it is for a high office candidate, before he is thrust into the kind of position that Cruz found himself in, to be a solidly vetted insider. Cruz is proving utterly incapable of living up to this in the spotlight, and surely they know that in time he will self-destruct.
What to do? The Establishment needs Cruz around just a little while longer as their point man. They rallied the troops around Milwaukee for him, but the lack of a similarly strong Republican party in Chicago meant that they were helpless to stop Trump in Illinois.
If the Establishment has any hope of carrying out its plan in Indiana, it will need the sitting Republican governor of that state, Mike Pence, a former Congressman who once represented the conservative suburbs southeast of Indianapolis, to rally the loyal troops on May 3 in a massive effort to turn the counties of central Indiana the same shade of dark tan as the ones around Milwaukee.
Can they pull it off? Even if they can deny Trump the delegates from Indiana, he can yet make up ground in Oregon and Washington in the second half of May, and New Mexico on June 7.
Worst of all, there are many unpledged delegates he might pick up, including entire state delegations of North Dakota and Colorado, which are acting as "superdelegations," as well as similar blocks in Wyoming and (most dangerously for them) Pennsylvania.
The Establishment knows it will be they, not Trump, going into the convention sweating the numbers, and no scenario looks good for them.
Given the tone in the media the last few days, it seems that they have come to realize that this entire plan is futile. This is what surrender looks like.**
*Cruz's loss in Kentucky (as well as Arkansas and Missouri) was especially damaging to him. This seems to fly in the face of the entire notion that he is "naturally strong with the Christian community." This ultimately springs from a conflation by the national (coastal) press of the types of conservatism in the South (and Greater Appalachia), compared that found in the Great Plains and the mountainous West. In some ways Kentucky is culturally closer to New Hampshire than to Kansas.
**for the time being, that is. For the Establishment, there is only a temporary armistice while they regroup.
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