Political analyst Charles Krauthammer offered both a prediction and a reason for it: “I think we’re getting to a moment where there’s a scenario that one can see. Which is, you get Bob Dole, who represents the old establishment … essentially choosing Trump over Cruz. Now, if Cruz loses Iowa, Trump wins convincingly, I think all he will need at that point is to have a single current establishment figure. Meaning a sitting governor or a sitting senator endorse him. Nobody has, everybody stayed away from him. But if there are people who think he’s the winning ticket, he’s going to win the nomination, [they’ll] want to be on the right side of this. … If you get somebody today from the so-called establishment who endorses him, I think it becomes a flood. At that point the dam breaks and you will get a rush of other establishment figures who will rally around him. And that could be the point at which he becomes inevitable as the nominee.”

So why would the establishment rather side with Trump than with Cruz?

“Well, I think the short answer is because everybody who knows him in the Senate hates him and I think hate is not an exaggeration,” Krauthammer explained. “The enmity which he wears on his sleeve — with pride — is something that he’s now, you could almost say cultivated to make him a freshman senator with no particular record into a national figure rallying everybody against the Washington cartel. You know, Republicans in the Senate, in the House have been out there half of their lives, [and they] don’t appreciate being called essentially traitors to the cause of conservatism. And then you get antipathy and they will put that antipathy even over what’s best for the party.”