Interesting analysis making the argument that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio might end up splitting the anti-Trump vote thus guaranteeing Donald the GOP nomination:

Despite the huge number of candidates, the 2016 race is now starting to have some similarities to the 2008 Republican contest with some 1996 thrown in for good measure. For all the talk about how this cycle is going to eventually come down to Cruz competing against Florida senator Marco Rubio, this contest is really a three-man race, just as 2008 was.

Everyone forgets this but in that year, there were 12 Republicans who ran for the nomination. Then as now, the party was divided over a candidate with a fair amount of support who was also widely disliked within the party. The difference this time, however, is that the divisive candidate is one favored by many conservatives (Trump) rather than one who was widely despised by the base (Arizona senator John McCain).

The ideological positioning of the leading candidate may be all that’s different this time around.

In both cycles, the highest-polling candidate was routinely attacked as a liberal pretending to be conservative. … Then as now, conservative journalists have almost been at war against the leading candidate. National Review in particular has been scorching in its daily denunciations of Trump. Though talk radio is divided today over Trump—Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity seem vaguely supportive while Glenn Beck and plenty of lower-rated hosts attack him frequently—it was uniformly against a McCain nomination. Several hosts even explicitly endorsed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as an alternative.

All of that was not enough to stop McCain, however, largely because the opposition to his nomination was unable to solidify into a large enough bloc. Multiple candidates split up the anti-McCain vote repeatedly in the early states.

No doubt McCain would hate being compared to Trump.