Getting Used To The Idea Of Herr Trumpf As The Titular Head Of The Republican Party?

He stole their party right out from under them!

I consider watching the debates as part of my job. I do it so you don't have to. But like I said after that last one... it was such garbage I turned it off soon after halftime. It wasn't even entertaining, just their same boring, Hate-Talk Radio points about how Obama and Hillary having destroyed the universe. And let's bomb someone into oblivion. A real GOP Hate Fest! Apparently, most normal people agreed. According to Nielsen, the ratings sucked-- 11 million viewers, the least watched GOP debate so far. And 2 million watched the irrelevant waste-of-time kiddie table "debate" earlier.

This morning Herr Trumpf was up at the crack of dawn... but he didn't accompany Ivanka, her husband Jared, and his two grandchildren, Arabella Rose and Joseph Frederick, to the Kehilath Jeshurun orthodox shul on East 85th Street. Instead he was having fun on the twitter machine. Apparently, it's now official: he has a new #1 enemy. Herr will dissect Ted Cruz alive and ridicule him to death the same way he's done to the mound of quivering jello who was once the two-term governor of Florida.

The L.A. Times isn't alone in bringing up the point that even before a single vote has been cast, it looks like it's too late to stop Trumpf and that the GOP is just going to have to live with his as the titular head of their party and as their presidential candidate. They enabled and even cultivated that ugly base they have and now they are reaping the results. Cathleen Decker reminded Times readers that during the debate Thursday, "Trump repeatedly dismissed the nuanced arguments of his peers in favor of the blunt and forceful assertions that have made the billionaire the party’s national front-runner... Trump sailed above the other candidates, who mostly engaged in round-robin fighting that left each of them wounded and him largely unscathed."

Trump and Cruz had maintained a friendly alliance through 2015, but that shattered in recent days and again Thursday, a reflection of the race in Iowa, which is closer than the national standings. The latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll in that state had Cruz at 25% and Trump at 22%, with Rubio at 12%, Carson at 11% and the rest trailing behind.

The debate fisticuffs between the two Iowa leaders started with a days-old dispute about whether Cruz, born in Canada to an American mother, fulfilled the Constitution’s requirement that a president be "natural-born."

"I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa," Cruz said, "but the facts and the law here are really quite clear."

Trump responded by citing a contrary view by Cruz’s former Harvard professor and jocularly suggested he was concerned lest there be complications if he picked Cruz as his vice presidential nominee.

Cruz again attempted to take on Trump when he defended an assessment days ago that Trump represented "New York values." Trump came back with a defense of his hometown that cited the world’s appreciation for the city after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack.

"It was with us for months, the smell, the air," Trump said. "And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made."

Trump’s debate presence has improved as the campaign has worn on; on Thursday, as he has in more recent debates, he seemed to shrug off many criticisms as if telling voters they should as well... [T]he question left hanging at the conclusion: Have they all missed their chance to take down Trump?

If Cruz loses in Iowa, his march to the nomination gets a lot harder. The best the establishment can hope for is enough splintering of the votes so that no one (i.e., Trumpf) has enough delegates to win on the first ballot. After that... the deadlock, brokered convention, the Ryan nomination and... the gunfight that ends the Republican Party forever.