Say it isn’t so Joe, for the first time on Sunday, columns critical of establishment golden boy and neocon sun king Marco Rubio began to pop up in the Washington Post like mushrooms out of cow pies after a spring fresh rain. The WAPO has been carrying the torch for Rubio for years now but with the ambitious young Miami Cuban once again taking gas in Saturday night’s contests it appears that a shift to throwing support to anyone who can stop the despised outsider Donald Trump is in the making. That is the case even if it happens to be the nearly equally reviled Ted Cruz who is nipping at Trump’s heels but can be dealt with later on at the brokered convention.

The trial balloon went up early, courtesy of former Florida Congressman and MSNBC conservative host Joe Scarborough in the scathing opinion piece simply entitled “Marco Rubio gets massacred”:

“Super Saturday” ended up being a Saturday night massacre for Marco Rubio. The establishment’s landslide choice to win the GOP nomination no longer seems capable of even finishing in second place. If the Florida senator wants to salvage his political career, it is time that his quixotic quest for the White House comes to an end.

After Iowa, Sen. Rubio promised his supporters he would rocket to the nomination on the strength of his 3-2-1 strategy. But one month later, he finished tonight’s contests 3-3-3-4. As Paul Begala said of Rubio, “Everybody likes him but the voters.”

In Kansas, Rubio lost to Ted Cruz by 32 percent. In Kentucky, he trailed Donald Trump by 20 percent and by 30 percent in Louisiana. And in Maine, the “Future of the Republican Party” was trounced by almost 40 points.

Republican voters were obviously turned off by Rubio’s efforts to match Donald Trump insult for insult. The Florida senator first suggested that the Manhattan billionaire had wet his pants during a presidential debate. Then — channeling bathroom humor found in Austin Powers — Marco Rubio suggested that the GOP frontrunner was poorly endowed sexually. It was too much for conservative voters who would normally be his natural constituency. Sen. Ted Cruz ended up being the beneficiary of Sen. Rubio’s juvenile behavior, as the Texas senator scored two more impressive victories in Kansas and Maine.

The Rubio campaign, by contrast, was left humiliated again, cornered into betting their candidate’s political future on a first place finish in Florida. That outcome was made more difficult by tonight’s collapse. If there is anyone around Rubio who understands that this campaign is over, they should tell him to go home, announce his run for reelection as a senator, get the voting card out of the glove compartment, and start rebuilding his political reputation right away.

Scarborough’s column is a stunning turn and only days ago would have been viewed as heresy by the WAPO but more soon followed including “Super Saturday results show Rubio collapsing, Trump stoppable and Cruz gaining momentum” as the establishment eats it’s own. It’s the latest and most damning piece of evidence that Prince Marco has never been more than an empty suit with a compelling backstory but now that the peasants have been awakened from their long slumber and sharpening their pitchforks he isn’t the right productf for the times. The establishment will quickly shift to backing Ted Cruz – who would be pulverized by Hillary Clinton in the general election due to his limited demographic appeal – who will be used until the brokered convention this summer when the party bosses can pick their own candidate and if he gets the message Rubio will be the VP on the ticket.

It’s going to be interesting to see how long that neocon dead-ender Jennifer Rubin holds out for the Rubio dream but it’s critical for the long game that he gets out before he gets his clock cleaned on his home turf by Trump or preferably Cruz.

As the song goes…

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

-The Rolling Stones