Many things about this campaign have been unfair, but are no less real for being unfair. One is that the primary calendar is not evenly distributed. As I have argued for months now, the front-loading of states favorable to Ted Cruz in the first week of March is both an opportunity and a challenge for Cruz. Now, the hour of peril is here. If ever there was a time for Cruz’s projections of millions of non-voting true conservatives to materialize, this is it. But if Cruz doesn’t have a very good showing on March 1 and 5 (more below on what that might look like), his plausible path to the nomination will go off to John Kasich-land, and he will be faced with the choice of staying on as a factional/vanity candidate or getting out for the good of the conservative movement. It may not be fair that Cruz faces this test earlier than Marco Rubio does, but it has been built into Cruz’s primary strategy and the nature of the calendar from the very beginning.

I have said for some time now – ever since my first choice in this race, Bobby Jindal, got out – that while I prefer Rubio to Cruz and think he would be a better general election candidate, I would without hesitation support Cruz if Rubio’s campaign no longer had a path forward, and I’d happily go to war behind Cruz in the fall. I had always assumed that Cruz would be in this race to the very end, and he’ll have money and supporters enough to do so if he chooses. With other time-wasting candidates (Kasich and Carson) still onstage, I’m in no hurry to get rid of one of our two remaining good choices. But by the morning of March 6 at the latest, if the Cruz campaign isn’t clearly in the driver’s seat, it will be time to throw in the towel if there’s to be any chance of stopping Trump and saving the conservative movement and the Republican Party.