Donald Trump didn’t surface in the wake of his drubbing last night in Wisconsin. But last night and then this morning, Trump did send forth campaign aides to trash the man who beat him. The attacks, which attempted to depict Cruz as “worse than a puppet” and a “Trojan horse” being used by “the Bush people” to steal the nomination from Trump didn’t do much to lessen the sting of what turned out to be a landslide loss for the frontrunner. But this is more than just the usual bad loser routine for Trump. The irony here is that Trump’s new line of attack on Cruz shows us how far the Texas senator has come. He entered the presidential race as a niche candidate who seemed unable to appeal to voters outside of the Tea Party or evangelicals. But after his latest victory, the question is whether GOP voters are starting to think of Cruz as something more than just the lesser of evils as the leading non-Trump in the race. The outcome of the GOP contest will probably hinge on whether Cruz can transcend what we all assumed to be his limitations and give Trump a real run for his money in the remaining primaries.

Trump’s trashing of Cruz as a favorite of the dreaded GOP establishment is more than just an insult. It shows that he’s worried that mainstream and moderate Republicans may actually start coalescing around Cruz. If indeed that were to happen, Cruz would not only wind up stopping Trump from getting the majority of delegates he needs to wrap up the nomination before the Cleveland convention. Putting a dent in Trump’s expected dominance of the Northeastern state primaries would set him up for more victories in the West. It would also put Cruz in a position to arrive at a contested convention as the candidate around whom Trump opponents would coalesce.

But there are two key obstacles to such an outcome and neither have anything to do with the avalanche of Trump vitriol that will be directed at Cruz in the coming weeks.

The first problem for Cruz is John Kasich. The Ohio governor has been on the receiving end from a lot of flack lately from both Cruz and Trump because both see him as preventing a one-on-one confrontation that could settle the race once and for all. Kasich continues to point to general election polls that show him as the Republican left in the race that would do the best against Hillary Clinton. But he continues to flop in Republican primaries. Wisconsin was just his latest disappointment as he got a disappointing 14 percent there. Kasich hopes to do better in New York, Pennsylvania, and other Northeastern states, and he can make an argument that he is the most moderate as well as the most electable GOP candidate.

But Kasich has no path to the nomination except in a scenario in which a deadlocked convention turned to him. Stranger things have happened in American history, but it’s more likely that he will be a kingmaker than a king since he may be able to barter his delegates for the vice presidential slot with either Trump or Cruz. In a year in which we may have the first contested convention in a generation and the first multi-ballot contest since 1948, Kasich is another throwback in that he is, for all intents and purposes, a favorite son candidate from Ohio, the only state he has or is likely to win.

So long as Kasich stays in the race, he makes it difficult if not impossible for Cruz to consolidate moderate Republicans behind him. By running a competitive race in some New York congressional districts and in Pennsylvania he could wind up being the difference that allows Trump to win. Yet Kasich’s increasingly poor showings could make him more of an annoyance than an obstacle. Right now, he is still finishing fourth in a three-man race since he still has fewer delegates to his credit than Marco Rubio and will be hard pressed to win any more. Yet the question of whether he is a true obstacle or merely an increasingly irrelevant third wheel depends on Cruz.

That’s because the main obstacle to the senator becoming the kind of national candidate who can beat Trump in the remaining primaries and then win the nomination at the convention is named Ted Cruz.

Cruz is, after all, the man who entered GOP contest seemingly intent only on securing the votes of the most conservative voters, be they evangelicals or Tea Partiers. That made sense in a 17-person race, but it is a problem for Cruz as he attempts to persuade the most moderate Republicans that they should throw in with him rather than wasting votes on Kasich. Cruz’s crack about Trump representing “New York values” may have made sense when he was appealing to Christian conservatives in Iowa but, now that he is hoping to win voters in New York, it isn’t quite so clever.

Cruz has changed his tone since Iowa as we saw with his speech last night in Wisconsin in which he appeared to be channeling the trademark optimism of Marco Rubio if not Ronald Reagan. But Cruz is still the same man who led Republicans off the cliff to a government shutdown in 2013. That quality comes out every now and then in statements like his ill-advised comment about sending the police into Muslim communities in this country. A lot of Republicans also think he is only slightly more electable than Trump and may be reluctant to embrace him solely out of a desire to stop the frontrunner. That was reflected in Marco Rubio’s decision not to endorse Cruz, which was reportedly the result of the influence of his key donors and supporters.

Either or both of these factors could be enough to prevent Cruz from breaking out in the upcoming primaries. But there are another two reasons to believe he can beat Trump and become the nominee.

The first is Donald Trump. Trump has already shown us that he is either incapable or just unwilling to play the frontrunner and begin acting in a presidential manner. Had he been able to do so, the GOP race would probably have already been decided. With Cruz placing even more pressure on him, there is every reason to believe the Trump campaign will continue to implode. A couple of more bad weeks from Trump and/or more Trump temper tantrums won’t persuade the 30-40 percent of the GOP electorate that are his loyalists to abandon him. But it will make it impossible for him to get beyond that mark and ultimately doom his hopes.

The second is also Ted Cruz. For all of his liabilities and rigid ideological blinders, Cruz has also already shown us that he is not a man to be underestimated. Few thought he would get this far. He is a fighter and no fool. If Trump is calling him a puppet of the Bush machine that’s because he is genuinely afraid that Cruz is capable of persuading moderates that he is the best alternative to Trump. Exit polls from Wisconsin showed that he broke through among moderates for the first time while holding his own with conservatives. If he can continue to do that, it’s a formula for victories in a lot of states that are now assumed to tip to Trump.

We won’t know if Cruz is more than just a non-Trump until the next states vote. But against all the odds he now has a chance to start beating Trump in primaries that are not ultra-conservative strongholds. If he does, it would be foolish to think he has no chance to win the Republican nomination.

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