YEAH, IT’S NOT CLEAR WHAT COULD SAVE BUSH NOW: GOP senators desert Bush for Rubio.

Republican senators are coming around to the view that Jeb Bush is unlikely to win the party’s nomination for president and that freshman Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) is the most viable prospect for the general election.

Rubio has had plenty of support among Beltway pundits since the outset of his campaign but Bush’s poor performance in the last Republican debate, together with his declining poll numbers, have begun to shift sentiment in even the upper echelons of the GOP’s establishment.

“Marco’s in the driver’s seat. There’s a lot of disappointment in Bush’s performance,” said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to discuss the race candidly.

The lawmaker, however, left the door ajar to the possibility of a Bush comeback, noting that “expectations for Jeb are so low that it won’t be hard to exceed them.

“He just needs a little momentum,” the lawmaker added.

Most GOP senators are waiting for the race to shake out before venturing to make a public endorsement, in case there’s a late reversal of fortune, which has happened in previous election cycles.

But one pro-Rubio senator said “it’s nearly unanimous” in the Republican conference that Bush is floundering and Rubio is on the rise.

“You can’t look at the overall picture and not think it,” said the senator. “The polling shows it. It’s just amazing what’s happened.”

Yeah, when I was in DC last week, I had a couple of “what the hell happened to Jeb?” conversations. He’s run a consistently awful campaign, and his instincts have been unerringly wrong.