Cruz?

Today an old college classmate of mine directed my attention to a Huffington Post article which insists, among other things, that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee for president.  I don't endorse much of what the article has to say; it's mostly a screed insisting that the Democrats can only win the election by nominating Sanders, which I don't believe for an instant.

However, I've started to wonder recently whether the worm may finally be turning for The Donald.  This is due partly to recent polling data collected at Talking Points Memo, which shows Cruz gaining steadily on Trump for the past three weeks (ignore the headline chart, which for some reason hasn't been updated since March 18, and scroll down to the actual poll results), including the most recent poll which has Trump leading by a mere 38-31 margin.

Then throw in the bump Cruz will no doubt get from his almost-certain victory in Wisconsin tomorrow, together with the fact that many (most?) of Trump's delegates are likely to abandon him if he fails to claim the nomination on the first ballot, and the scales seem to be tipped slightly in Cruz' favor.

Kasich?  Ryan?  Romney?  No.  Thanks to the GOP rule which requires that the nominee must win a majority of delegates in at least 8 states, Trump and Cruz will enter the convention as the only eligible candidates.  And since those two campaigns together hold considerable influence, there's essentially no chance that rule will be changed.

It seems likely that if Cruz gets enough delegates to block Trump from getting the nomination on the first ballot, then he's probably won enough primaries to meet the eight-state rule (Cruz has 5 so far).  So if Trump isn't the nominee, it has to be Cruz.