“I have a lot of money, and I’m not getting out. I’m going to win,” Trump said. “You watch: When this campaign is over, I win. As good as I’m doing — and I’m leading the polls — it’s just the start.”

Trump added, “I want this to be serious, I really do.”

However, a consensus is forming in Republican circles that Trump’s eruption over Kelly and other Fox News anchors makes his campaign anything but serious.

“The fire still burns, but the fire is now contained,” said Alex Castellanos, a veteran GOP strategist. “He can’t grow. He has condemned himself to be a protest candidate, not a serious candidate for the Republican nomination. That means we now move forward to a more normal debate.”…

“If you start to see erosion of Trump’s numbers, it could become a tailspin quickly, and it could be hard to pull the plane out of the dive,” said Phil Musser, a GOP consultant and chairman of IMGE, a digital media agency. “There would be a major pile-on and likely a spectacular crash.”