For the Record: Fasting for Cruz, nachos for everyone else

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Watching the results come in from South Carolina, we started to get giddy. Every political junkie's dream is for a major party to choose their candidate via a brokered convention, easily the biggest perversion of representative democracy we could ever see. This goes way beyond simply wanting the game to go on longer; this is perverse love for chaos. This isn't wanting the Broncos and Panthers to take Super Bowl 50 into overtime; this is wanting to see every football player's agent to disappear into the locker room, emerge 45 minutes later and tell everyone they voted to give the trophy to the Cowboys, and punting is henceforth illegal.

We're still five months away from that happening, though. In the meantime, if you want to keep up on the day-to-day news in the presidential race, sign up for the For the Record newsletter. We promise to keep the brokered convention daydreaming to a minimum.

Jeb:(

On Saturday, Jeb Bush pulled off what nobody expected: He showed everyone that it's possible to have hundreds of millions in the bank and still drop out of the race after three states. After leading the pack for most of 2015, the ultimate outsider candidate finished sixth in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire and fourth in South Carolina while Republican voters gravitated toward other, more outsidery candidates.

What's left of the Jeb Bush campaign? He could always endorse either Rubio or Kasich, the two remaining establishment candidates, except it definitely won't be Rubio. The pro-Jeb super PAC, Right to Rise, is running on fumes. All that's left are former supporters and donors. Both Rubio and Kasich were scrambling to pick up Jeb's old donors, with Rubio in the early lead. "“To me, the only logical one is either Kasich or Rubio,” said one former Bush donor. “And poor John, I don’t think he has enough to win that battle, so I guess my default has to be Marco." New Marco Rubio campaign slogan idea — "Rubio: Your only choice, by default."

The old-fashioned Carolina Three-Way

In non-Jeb news from South Carolina: Donald Trump won 32.5% of the vote while Rubio edged out Ted Cruz, 22.5% to 22.3%, for second place. Much further down the list were Bush (7.8%), John Kasich (7.6%) and Ben Carson (7.2%). If voters start to narrow their choices to those top three candidates, we'll have Trump as "The Guy Who Wins," Cruz as "The Guy Who Won That One Time Trump Didn't," and Rubio as "The Guy the Establishment Will End Up Supporting." None of the three have a good reason to drop out anytime soon ... which may mean that none of them will win a majority of delegates during the primary season ... which means we may see every political junkie's dream: the aforementioned brokered convention.

A brokered convention hasn't happened in decades, but the upshot is that instead of having a ceremonial nomination of the party's selection, all the state delegates end up fighting, negotiating, and horse-trading policies and platforms to come to some sort of consensus on one candidate. So what will sway the Trump voters to switch to Cruz, or vice versa? What will bring Cruz voters to switch to Rubio? Seeing as how all the candidates (and their supporters) can't stand one another, we can't imagine ... which is why a non-candidate like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan could theoretically emerge as a consensus choice. Seeing it all play out live during the convention, though — everyone would be talking about it for decades.*

* - Not everyone. Just political journalists.

Berning sensation subsides

The Democrats, on the other hand, took a major step toward coalescing around one candidate Saturday in Nevada. Despite late polls that showed Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a dead heat, the better-organized Team Clinton walked away with a fairly comfortable five-point win in the Silver State. Next Saturday it's on to South Carolina, where Clinton enjoys a sizable 20-plus point lead thanks in part to support from minority voters.

It's far from the end for Bernie Sanders, but it does blunt his momentum and raises new questions about his ability to win in states that aren't overwhelmingly white. Following South Carolina comes Super Tuesday on March 1, with Hillary leading the most recent polls in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Bernie, meanwhile, leads in Massachusetts and Vermont. Sanders isn't done yet, but it's a bad sign when your strategy involves winning the states where John Kasich is competitive.

So it's just a one-day fast, or ... ?

Anti-Cruz factions, bon appétit. You're eating for two today.

I would like to ask you to join me and my family Monday in a fast for Ted Cruz, our country and the Nevada caucus. #scprimary#tedcruz#nevadacaucus
Posted by Glenn Beck on Saturday, February 20, 2016

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For the Record: Fasting for Cruz, nachos for everyone else

Jeb:(

The old-fashioned Carolina Three-Way

Berning sensation subsides

More from the campaign trail

So it's just a one-day fast, or ... ?