The Republican presidential debate on Thursday at the University of Houston proved to be the proverbial shootout viewers and CNN were hoping for. Front-runner Donald Trump spent much of the evening getting flanked by attacks from Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Cruz and Rubio landed haymaker after haymaker on Trump, with Rubio surprisingly being the most aggressive of the two senators in the exchanges with Trump.

Both Cruz and Rubio surrogates after the debate claimed that no coordination was agreed upon before the debate to stop Trump, but it’s hard not to believe the senators since nothing like this has happened to Trump in the previous nine Republican debates.

Now, enter the most vocal of the conservative activists rallying to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination: Eric Erickson.

Erickson published a post on his website The Resurgent Friday night about the need to stop Trump from winning and helped jump start a trending topic on Twitter called #NeverTrump. As of publication late Friday night, it was the top trending topic on the social media platform.

Erickson laid down a litany of concerns that many conservative activists have voiced about Trump in the past, including what many believe is a lack of electability and his overall demeanor towards women, minorities and basic human rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Erickson states:

I will not vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States even if he is the Republican nominee. He is an authoritarian blending nationalist and tribal impulses, which historically has never worked out well for the nation that goes in that direction or the people in that nation.

Erickson continues with more, which you can read here.

I hesitate to even write this, but I agree with Erickson and other conservatives. If Trump wins the nomination, he won’t win the White House -- whether it’s against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Senator Bernie Sanders. If Trump does win, then he will be the last GOP president to ever be elected.

I expect to hear from other Republicans and conservatives that not ever voting for Trump means a win for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, etc. But a Trump nomination means that the Democrats already have won.

The voters on March 1 and March 15 can stop Trump. The question remains: will they?

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