Washington Free Beacon reporter Lachlan Markay discussed the Republican presidential field on Fox Business Network on Tuesday.
Markay predicted that Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) will become the establishment favorite for the nomination, ousting erstwhile favorite Gov. Jeb Bush.
Transcript below:
LOU DOBBS: Joining us now, Lachlan Markay, author, columnist, Fox News contributor Jedediah Bila. We’ll start Jedediah with you, looks like Cruz is making a strong move, still well behind in the national polls to front-runner Donald Trump, but making a big move in Iowa.
JEDEDIAH BILA: Yes, and we predicted this right here on the show. We talk about it a lot. Talked about the fact that conservatives are looking for someone that's reliable. That potentially wasn't Ben Carson or Donald Trump. Donald Trump and Ben Carson have a tendency to make a lot of mistakes, have a tendency to say things that leave people saying are they serious? Can they be president? Can we trust them if there was a hot button national security issue? The fact of the matter is Ted Cruz is probably the smartest guy of the room all the time. He gives conservatives a lot of confidence, gives evangelicals a lot of confidence. He taps into the conservative base, if you look at Twitter, talk radio. Look at Mark Levin, people who conservatives look to—
DOBBS: You go through all of that and come up with Mark Levin? How about Rush Limbaugh?
BILA: I say Mark because he's a friend of mine. Hi, Mark. People look to reliable conservatives and say who is this person—and Ted Cruz happens to be that guy.
DOBBS: I love this, reliable conservatives. Do you agree, Lachlan?
LACHLAN MARKAY: Obviously the Republican Party is pretty splintered right now. If you see Trump shooting up in the polls and I think he's taking a lot of support that Ben Carson is losing right now. I think that might actually speed the sort of the establishment coalescing around an alternative, whether that's Rubio or Christie or Bush or Fiorina.
DOBBS: You don't think they've done that, it looks like cause and effect out there to me, Lachlan, looks like we're seeing strong support for Rubio, strong support for Cruz. Bush, he's ebbing very quickly, and that is a coalition that's built of the establishment, the establishment and the establishment.
MARKAY: Well, I think once you start seeing sort of a winnowing of the field, and people have been whispering about Jeb Bush dropping out for a few weeks now. If that were to happen, that would really shake things up and you'd see a lot of support in terms of votes and money and delegates and high-profile endorsements. You would see that lining up behind Rubio pretty quickly.
BILA: Oh yeah.
DOBBS: I wonder if endorsements are going to help or hurt this year. We're looking at an electorate that's had a bellyful of establishment professional politicians and Rubio's name rings like a bell in all of that.
BILA: No one cares about all of that.
DOBBS: They don't?
BILA: No. It's true, though.
DOBBS: Jedediah, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I get it. I know you love Rubio.
BILA: No! But I—
DOBBS: I have to insist that we look at reality here.
BILA: Reality of what?
DOBBS: We cannot dismiss it with a wave of our wands.
BILA: That's what I'm saying, I'm saying the big-time donors, the big-time cash, they're not going to predict this election. They’re not going to predict who wins.
DOBBS: Oh, okay, so we're agreeing. Okay.
BILA: You got so distracted thinking I liked Marco Rubio, he had to crack a joke. I do like Marco Rubio by the way.
DOBBS: So it's no joke?
BILA: No, I think it's going to be an interesting— my prediction is a Marco Rubio versus Ted Cruz really fierce debate coming to the forefront, and I think conservatives are going to have to choose and the establishment will fight hard for Marco Rubio because they believe he's the more electable guy. Whether or not he can get out of a primary remains to be seen. Ted Cruz is a force to be reckoned with.
MARKAY: If the establishment pick becomes Rubio, conservatives have a good election cycle ahead of them. As far as establishment candidates go, I think Rubio's a conservative one, more so than Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush.
BILA: Talk to them about immigration. If you look at immigration or—
DOBBS: Can I ask one question here? I don't want to intrude, but I do want to know what happened to Donald Trump in this—the front-runner who has overwhelming support in a plurality here in this field. You both just dismissed him. I wonder what happened to him. Lachlan?
DOBBS: I think he's got a high floor of support in the sense that he's got very wide name recognition and his style appeals to a lot of people. But I think he's got a low ceiling and I think a lot of the bombastic things he said have turned off a lot of people who weren't supporting them. He wasn't their first choice to begin with but I can't see them coming around to support him. I don't know if he has broad enough appeal to lock up the delegates he's going to need.
DOBBS: Even though he's always ahead in every state by a substantial margin, with the exception of Iowa.
BILA: I think if he continues this pattern with the retweets he gets on television and says he didn't look up, I think he will be viewed less sturdy and less reliable and the Ted Cruz's and Marco Rubio's will ultimately steal his thunder.
DOBBS: Lachlan sees the floor when he heads the name Donald Trump and you think of a distant cloud. Jedediah Bila, Lachlan Markay, thanks for being with us.