Too Late to Stop Donald Trump?

This is the existential question establishment Republicans are asking themselves right now.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Too late to stop Trump? As he glides, other candidates fall back in debate":

Tuesday night’s fractious presidential debate was the long Republican campaign condensed into little more than two hours: Donald Trump sailed above the other candidates, who mostly engaged in round-robin fighting that left each of them wounded and him largely unscathed.

As a result, the debate, the sixth in a nomination contest that has defied predictions, left a GOP establishment that fears disastrous repercussions from a Trump nomination no closer to finding a way to head him off, with the first balloting now a little more than two weeks away.

Trump repeatedly dismissed the nuanced arguments of his peers in favor of the blunt and forceful assertions that have made the billionaire the party’s national front-runner.

Declaring that "I will gladly accept the mantle of anger," he made clear that he understands what many of his establishment foes still seem not to — that much of what they see as weaknesses in his campaign are the wellsprings of its support. But in this debate, he also sanded some of his sharp edges with humor and worked to humanize himself.

His opponents, by contrast, often acting with visible desperation to attract attention as voters start making up their minds, seemed mostly intent on fighting among themselves. That precluded any single candidate from rising above the others.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, tied with Trump in first-voting Iowa, tried to take on the businessman repeatedly, but found his complaints dismissed. He was himself pummeled by other candidates who want to replace him as Trump’s main nemesis.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in particular, clashed angrily with Cruz over their positions on immigration and taxes.

Back when the campaign started, Rubio offered an upbeat new-generation pitch as the centerpiece of his campaign. But as Thursday night showed, he has stepped away from some of what made him distinctive as he has tried to conform to the GOP electorate’s mood. He now has adopted a much harsher tone and a bleaker assessment of the nation’s standing.

In the course of the conflict, he and Cruz emptied their opposition research files onto each other, with Rubio at one point moving from criticism of Cruz’s positions on immigration, trade, crop insurance and ethanol supports to accuse the Texas senator of having once called Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked U.S. secrets, "a great public servant."

"Edward Snowden is a traitor. And if I am president and we get our hands on him, he is standing trial for treason," Rubio said.

Republicans typically pick as their nominee the person who placed second the last time out, but this race has been nothing the party has seen before. The second-place finisher last time, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, has done so poorly that he was relegated to the three-candidate opening debate, which was held before the seven finalists took the stage.

Instead, it is Trump who has controlled the race...

More.

ADDED: Just saw this, from Jonathan Chait, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Have Republicans Given Up on Fighting Donald Trump?"