Farthest right
Matthew Yglesias writes at Vox that the candidate with the most extreme message is not Donald Trump — but the establishment favorite, Marco Rubio himself.
Racing forward
No one has ever lost the GOP nomination after winning in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. Will Trump be the exception? He’s in line to win in Nevada. He’s leading the polls in most states voting on March 1. Rubio got the big Nikki Haley endorsement in South Carolina and finished a distant second. South Carolina is a state built for Cruz, who finished third. Jeb!, Trump’s biggest critic, has dropped out and his donors haven’t yet flocked to Rubio. Can you see why the GOP establishment is worried? Via The New York Times.
No guarantees
John Fund at The National Review writes that the Trump inevitability scenario is a myth. Not that he’s saying he won’t win.
Jeb!’s out
Jeb! took on Trump in the debates, and everyone cheered, until, that is, they got in the voting booth. That leaves Cruz and Rubio to take on Trump now. Via The New Yorker.
Adding up
For Hillary Clinton, the Nevada win was all about the math. Now it’s all starting to add up again. Via Politico.
Any impact?
Bernie has the money and he has the plan to take the Democratic primary race all the way. But will it matter? Via The Washington Post.
Deep dive
You don’t need Nate Silver to figure out the Clinton-Sanders race. Public Polling Policy has polled Democrats in most of the early states and offers up more than 100 pages of deep dive. Enjoy.
Anti-Bernie
Why are so many leftish policy wonks so down on Bernie? And we don’t just mean Paul Krugman. Via The New York Times.
New fight
Mitch McConnell has been involved in Supreme Court fights for nearly forever. But he’s never been in one like this. Via Politico.
Scalia’s failures
Jeffrey Toobin writes in The New Yorker that Antonin Scalia tried very hard to make America a less fair, less tolerant and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, Toobin says, Scalia mostly failed.
Photo credit: Marc Nozell, Creative Commons, Flickr.
