As expected, Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucuses tonight. I’ll update this post later with details on the size of his victory and whether Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio took second place. Either way, the odds on anyone stopping Trump from getting the GOP nomination are getting longer.

Conservative talk radio host Steve Deace has used his megaphone and his access to national media to promote Cruz’s campaign since last summer but has lately been frustrated by the Cruz campaign strategy.

Deace said the voters in South Carolina were responding to Cruz’s reluctance to fight with Trump and his apologies to Rubio and Carson: They are “sending Cruz a message, and I think that message is that they want him to go back to being that alpha male conservative leader that people fell in love with.”

Deace believes “At first Team Cruz was brilliant not to attack Trump from a position of weakness, like so many others did early and failed.” However, in his view, “once Cruz won Iowa, the sole focus should’ve been on Trump instead of worrying about Rubio doing an end-run.” He summarized last week’s Republican political combat as “Cruz-Rubio bicker over bronze medals, mailers, and robocalls. Trump debates the pope and Islam.”

While I see where Deace is coming from, there was a logic to the strategy of trying to eliminate the main competition to be the last man standing against Trump, as opposed to taking on the front-runner first. What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread. Incidentally, the Nevada caucuses were much more poorly organized than Iowa’s. But that won’t help us keep our place in the nominating process. Rather, the widespread problems and mismanagement in Nevada will become ammunition for those seeking to ban all caucuses for presidential selection.

UPDATE: Republican strategist Adrian Gray posted some data yesterday that explains why the GOP establishment is terrified of Trump at the top of the ticket. First look at how Hillary Clinton’s favorability numbers compare to other presidential nominees since 1992. Then look at the eye-poppingly low favorables for Trump.

SECOND UPDATE: A crushing victory for Trump. With 96 percent of results in, the billionaire has 45.9 percent, Rubio 23.9 percent, and Cruz 21.4 percent. I wonder whether Ben Carson’s 4.8 percent was enough to keep Cruz out of second place. Bringing up the rear, John Kasich had 3.6 percent.

THIRD UPDATE: Added below excerpts from Trump’s victory speech. The full transcript is available at Quartz. It sounds like a Monty Python routine.

From the Quartz transcript of Donald Trump’s February 23 victory speech in Nevada:

You know we weren’t expecting—a couple of months ago, we weren’t expecting to win this one, you know that right? We weren’t. Of course if you listen to the pundits, we weren’t expected to win too much, and now we’re winning, winning, winning the country. And soon the country’s going to start winning, winning, winning.So I want to thank the volunteers. They’ve been unbelievable. […]

So I want to begin by thanking my boys, Eric has been all over the place making speeches. He’s getting better than me so I’m a little jealous. And Don went to _____, you were all over, right?

He loves the rifle stuff. This is serious rifle. This is serious NRA, both of them, both of them. We love the Second Amendment folks, nobody loves it more than us, so just remember that. […]

I want to just thank a couple of friends of mine that are here, the owner of this incredible hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Phil Ruffin, stand up. Great guy. Phil said, “Donald,”—like for the last three months he’s driving me crazy, he said—”Donald, I want to put $10 million into your campaign. I said Phil I don’t want your money. I don’t want to do it. I’m self funding.” Every time I see him. It’s hard for me to turn down money because that’s what I’ve done in my whole life, I grab and grab and grab. You know I get greedy I want money, money.

I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, right? We get greedy right? Now we’re going to get greedy for the United States we’re going to grab and grab and grab. We’re going to bring in so much money and so much everything. We’re going to make America great again, folks, I’m telling you folks we’re going to make America great again. […]

But I’ll tell you it looks like we won by a lot evangelicals. I love evangelicals, and I have to tell you pastor [Robert] Jeffress has been so incredible on television and elsewhere. He has been great. And as you know Liberty University — do we love Liberty University? Huh? Jerry Falwell Jr., an unbelievable guy and he has been with us and with us from the beginning, and I want to thank Jerry and his family. It’s been amazing, the relationship. So we won the evangelicals.

We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. We’re the smartest people, we’re the most loyal people, and you know what I’m happy about? Because I’ve been saying it for a long time. 46% were the Hispanics—46%, number one with Hispanics. I’m really happy about that. […]

We have a tremendous deficit. We have a trade deficit with Mexico. They’ll pay for the wall. They’ll be very happy about it. Believe me. I’ll talk to them. They’re going to be very, very thrilled. They’re going to be thrilled to be paying for the wall.

We’re going to be the smart people. We’re not going to be the people that get pushed around all over the place. We’re going to be the smart people. You’re going to be proud of your president, and you’re going to be even prouder of your country, OK?