RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Sanders could muster a mere 26% of South Carolina Democrats. The exit polls say Mrs. Clinton won an almost unbelievable 86% of the black vote, suggesting that she will also sweep the other southern states with heavy African-American populations on Tuesday. Mr. Sanders will presumably win in Vermont, and maybe another state or two, but that won’t be nearly enough to stop Mrs. Clinton from cruising to the nomination.

The Democratic contest thus returns to the normalcy of recent decades, which is that a progressive insurgency invariably fails against the establishment favorite. Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Howard Dean and Mr. Sanders were all favorites of the white gentry left. They lost because they couldn’t defeat the government unions or persuade enough African-Americans. Barack Obama was the exception because he could compete for the black vote.

Mrs. Clinton continued to underperform among younger voters, and underlying economic anxiety should concern Democrats going into November. Some 84% of Democrats in South Carolina said they are either very or somewhat worried about the U.S. economy. But the Clinton juggernaut shows that, unlike the GOP, there really is a Democratic establishment composed of powerful interest groups that determine the nominee. Those forces are rallying to defeat Mr. Sanders, whom they view as unelectable. READ MORE AT SITE

David McIntosh has been fighting for economic freedom for 30 years, and he is convinced the battle has reached a hinge moment. “The stakes really are that high,” says the president of the Club for Growth. “If we don’t do this, it’s all at risk. This is the moment.”

By “this” he means denying Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination. The club is one of America’s most effective free-enterprise advocacy groups, and for months it has tried to alert voters, often without much other support, to the risks of a Trump nomination.

With the primary race now at a decisive moment, Mr. McIntosh is trying to rally support for a sustained anti-Trump push leading up to the winner-take-all primaries on March 15. With Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finally confronting the front-runner, Mr. McIntosh is convinced that the billionaire can still be defeated with the help of a sustained TV and social-media assault.

“We’ve got people on our side still saying, ‘Let’s wait and see.’ Or ‘maybe we can fix this in a brokered convention,’ ” says Mr. McIntosh. “My message is that’s too late. It’s got to be now.”

When Mr. McIntosh took over the Club for Growth presidency more than a year ago, the former Indiana congressman had no idea his first real fight would be trying to stop a TV celebrity from hijacking the Republican Party. The club usually plays in House and Senate campaigns, and it is backing no presidential candidate. “We’re neutral on the other candidates. We’ve said that both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are gold standards—either would be great on economic issues. This is about stopping Trump.” READ MORE AT SITE

Donald Trump has run a nasty, vicious, and loathsome campaign. His views, ideas, and policies are, for the most part, the complete antithesis of what small-c conservatism represents, or should represent, in a modern democratic society.

There’s no denying, however, that he has been incredibly successful.

Trump’s personal appeal, tough stances, and populist positions have clearly resonated with voters. He’s won three states (New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada) and finished second in Iowa. If current poll numbers are accurate, he’s easily going to win most of the states on Super Tuesday.

Unless Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz get together before, say, March 1 — and bring John Kasich and Ben Carson along for the ride — this contest could almost be mathematically over within a few weeks’ time. (Just a thought, gentlemen.)

Win or lose, the brash billionaire businessman has certainly had a huge impact on modern-day American politics. In fact, his tactics could ultimately be emulated by like-minded political candidates down the road. Here’s something I firmly believe will survive well past Trump’s candidacy.

Trump has thrown out the traditional political playbook so many times on the campaign trail, it could make your head spin. At the same time, he has used ideas, concepts, and lines (both written and speaking) that are completely foreign to most political strategists, communicators, and speechwriters.

Flashy plays better than methodical in prime time, so Marco Rubio was beaming like a big winner after Thursday night’s debate in Houston. In Ted Cruz, though, I’m happy to have the candidate who looks best the morning after.

The rival senators, both attractive, articulate and wicked smart, have been frequent conservative allies. Hostilities became inevitable when they fixed their eyes on the same prize. On Thursday night, though, they were frenemies. Finally, and hopefully not too late, the pair figured out that the only sensible target for their mutually assured destruction is the real MAD man, Donald Trump — not each other.

The tag team was effective. The Donald limped away revealed for what he is, a fraud — a liberal Democrat posing as the Republican savior. For example, his ballyhooed crackdown on illegal immigration is, in reality, an amnesty plan that conveniently goes unmentioned in the position paper touted by his campaign. The real plan — as implausible for law enforcement and gratuitously burdensome for aliens as it is Iraq-like expensive for taxpayers — is to hunt down and deport 12 million people, only to . . . yes . . . bring them back into the country legally – i.e., with amnesty.

How many aliens will be brought back? Like most fraudsters, Trump gives different answers to different audiences. When he (or one of his sons) speaks to groups sympathetic to illegals, we’re led to believe they’re all returning: essentially, Americans would provide paid vacations for several million illegals before Trump welcomes them back to compete for American jobs. But Thursday night, before a crowd of Texans who live with the damage illegal immigration does, we got stingy Trump: Only “the best of them will come back” (however many that may be), but rest assured it’s going to be “through a process.” Well, yes . . . the process is called amnesty.