South Carolina was a disaster for Cruz. He needed desperately to win there in order to establish himself as the frontrunner in the SEC primary; as it stands today, he is only favored to win two or three states on March 1, which won’t be nearly enough for him, given the limited appeal of his campaign outside of the South and the Plains states.
Cruz doesn’t have a Plan B, so the only thing he can do at this point is to double down on his previous tactic of slamming Trump for being an unreliable conservative and hope it works better than it did last week. That doesn’t seem very likely.
As the field is currently constituted, it would appear that his ceiling is around 25 percent. He could increase that to about 30 percent if he could get Carson out of the race, since he is the closest ideological match for disappointed Carson voters. Carson doesn’t seem to want to leave, however; perhaps Ted’s dirty tricks in Iowa are coming back to haunt him.
One thing is for certain: Ted is in it for the long haul. He has plenty of money, and his prospects in the Senate are worse than grim. Anyone who bets on Rubio’s chances in a two-man race need to consider that.