Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist David Brooks insisted that despite the commanding leads Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in polling in several key states and nationally, neither one of those two candidates will be the Republican nominee.

Instead, Brooks insisted it will be Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) because it was his view Cruz and Trump would damage one another too much to make either viable in the long-run.

“This is going to go on for a long time, and this is like the Iran-Iraq war, I want them both to lose. And I think that’s good. I still think –I’m the last person in America who thinks this isn’t Trump-Cruz.”

“This is going to go on for months, if you get A attacking B, and B attacking A, you’re going to get a C,” he continued. “It’s going to be Rubio. I’m telling you, it’s going to be Rubio.  Right now, you have the conflict between the conservative, the philosophical conservative wing, which is the National Review crowd, and the rogue wing, which is talk radio and Trump. And so it’s interesting to see how that breaks down. Right now, Trump has the advantage in that, because the conservative movement is less conservative than it was ten years ago. The financial crisis has hit people hard, and they want a government that’s on the side of the little guys, as long as it’s not filled with liberal values. So Trump, in the short term, but we’re prepping the establishment. Do not panic. There are going to be months of this. Wait for Rubio.”

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