“There are three weeks, through March 15, to get it right,” Fred Malek, another Republican stalwart, told me in an email exchange.

Yes, most see it as too late to stop Trump by March 1. For one thing, early voting has already begun; about one-third of the SEC primary votes will already have been cast by the time election day dawns. That, the thinking goes, helps Trump, not only because he leads in most of the polls but because early voters are casting votes in the glow of Trump’s South Carolina win…

Of course, that’s still not a lot of time. One might think there would be a super-duper top priority, all-hands-on-deck, 24-7, stop-Trump effort going on right now, with lots of meetings and game plans and check-writing.

Or maybe not. “There’s no organized move that I’m aware of,” Malek told me. “Just a lot of folks surmising after South Carolina that we have only one alternative.”