Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. At best he’s kind of a comic-book version of a Caesarist-wannabe. Had he been born two millennia ago as Donaldus Trumpum, he would have dodged the Gallic Wars, hired a ghostwriter to pen a memoir about them, and spent his time producing entertainments for the circuses while hatching schemes to deprive hardworking citizens of their bread. But the Ides of March may help determine his electoral fate, as they marked the end of Caesar’s temporal one.
On March 15 we pass the halfway mark in votes cast and delegates selected in the Republican presidential nominating race. On that historically momentous day, we have the first two of nine winner-take-all contests, Florida and Ohio. If Trump sweeps those, he is the likely (though not certain) nominee. If Trump loses both, he’s very unlikely to be the nominee. If the states render a split verdict, we go on with a competitive race between the Caesarist-wannabe and the real Republicans (in both senses of the word).
