Think back to the before time, the long long ago, prior to Donald Trump being defeated in Iowa and his mantra about being a winner proven false. In those dark days there was a beacon of light, a sort of Establishment Bat Signal:
You'll note that this cover merely says "Against Trump." It doesn't say "For Rubio!" or "Jeb's Our Guy!" The message is far, far simpler: "This guy is no good."
And, of course, the Establishment got their way on Monday, as this chart from the New York Times' website clearly shows:
One Establishment candidate came in first place. Another Establishment candidate came in third. These two alone nabbed 50.7 percent of the vote. If you add up the Establishment stragglers (your Bushes, your Kasichs, etc.) you get to roughly three-quarters of the vote. The only two non-Establishment candidates, honestly, are Trump and Carson (and maybe Paul and Huckabee, though one's a political legacy and the other's a former Fox News host).
And they got smoked.
Now, when I highlight the fact that Cruz is a total Establishment pick, I'm often greeted with something like the following:
And then they'll say "But K St hates him!" Which, fair. Noted crony capitalist Trump—the only viable non-Establishment candidate—is definitely the preferred candidate for the so-called K Street Gang. But Cruz—a senator with a long history in government service who has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court of the United States and graduated from Ivy League schools such as Princeton and Harvard Law—is absolutely preferred by the intellectual wing of the Establishment over Donald Trump.
You'll find plenty of folks who disagree with Cruz on some issue here and there. (I remember when a few folks got all stampy-footed over this, for instance.) But you'll find few who argue he isn't a conservative or that he'd be a disastrous intellectual choice for the nominee. I'm old enough to remember when the dread Establishment suggested that Ted Cruz could be "the conservative Barack Obama" and celebrated the fact that his intellectual prowess and pedigree gave the left fits.
He may not be the first choice of the Establishment, mind you, because his electability is an open question. But that's kind of beside the point now: he's merely the anti-Trump, the Establishment figure behind which the Establishment can rally.
And that's great! Because, in the end, the Establishment always wins.