"Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump... the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair..."

"... as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada. Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar. The endorsement by Mr. Christie, a not unblemished but still highly regarded figure within the party’s elite — he is a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association — landed Friday with crippling force. It was by far the most important defection to Mr. Trump’s insurgency: Mr. Christie may give cover to other Republicans tempted to join Mr. Trump rather than trying to beat him. Not just the Stop Trump forces seemed in peril, but also the traditional party establishment itself."

From a NYT article, based on interviews with insiders, titled "Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump."

The most interesting revelation is that despite Christie's skewering of Rubio for his robotic scriptedness, after Christie dropped out of the race, Rubio reached out to Christie, to try to get his endorsement. But Rubio bungled it. He left a voice mail that included some sort of assurance that Christie had "had a bright future in public service":

Mr. Christie, 53, took the message as deeply disrespectful and patronizing, questioning why “a 44-year-old” was telling him about his future, said people who described his reaction on the condition of anonymity. Further efforts to connect the two never yielded a direct conversation.

Meanwhile, Trump "made frequent calls to Mr. Christie once he dropped out," and "the two met at Trump Tower on Thursday with their wives."

And doesn't that show the problem? It's not just that Trump has his posh real estate and well-practiced socializing skills to butter up useful people, but that Rubio doesn't have anything comparable. He left a voice mail and it was patronizing. He even had the opportunity to script the hell out of the message before calling and he failed to anticipate how his words would affect someone about whom he knew plenty. How is this man supposed to deal with all the many people a President must interact with in all sorts of planned and spontaneous encounters? How can GOP insiders have come up with the idea of everyone coalescing around Rubio? The only argument seems to be to scare everyone into thinking that Trump is a horrible disaster. But Christie's judgment refutes that last ditch scare tactic.

And, by the way, Mitt Romney won't endorse Rubio:

Mr. Rubio’s advisers were... thwarted in their efforts to secure an endorsement from Mr. Romney, whom they lobbied strenuously after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary. Mr. Romney had been eager to tilt the race, and even called Mr. Christie after he ended his campaign to vent about Mr. Trump and say he must be stopped. On the night of the primary, Mr. Romney was close to endorsing Mr. Rubio himself, people familiar with his deliberations said. Yet Mr. Romney pulled back, instead telling advisers that he would take on Mr. Trump directly.

What's wrong with Rubio?!