Earlier today, CNN reported that Roboto's senior aides were fighting over whether it's time for Marco to pull out of the campaign.

A battle is being waged within Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's campaign about whether he should even remain in the Republican presidential race ahead of his home state primary on March 15, sources say.

Rubio himself is "bullish" on his odds of winning the critical primary, despite some advisers who are less hopeful and believe a loss there would damage him politically in both the short- and long-term.

He doesn't want to get killed in his home state," one source familiar with the discussions said, noting "a poor showing would be a risk and hurt his political future."

Most analysts including moi, believe Rubio has no shot - and never did at the nomination, but unlike Trump, I'd want him to stay so he can siphon off some of Cruz' votes.

After CNN reported this news, Alex Conant, Rubio's spokesman went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and attacked this report vociferously.

Rubio spokesman Alex Conant went on CNN shortly after Gangel and called her report "utter nonsense."

"She did not contact the campaign prior to coming on the show last hour before reporting that. It's absolutely 100% false. CNN is doing a disservice to voters by airing that sort of reporting without even checking with the campaign," Conant said. "Her sources, whatever they are, have no idea what the internal operations of the campaign are because if she did, she would know that Marco feels confident about Florida."

Conant asked CNN host Wolf Blitzer, who was reading details of Gangel's report, to "stop reading that sort of fiction on air."

It makes sense that Rubio's advisers would be very protective of his career if he has one, and losing in Florida would be a big punch in the gut for the Florida Senator. I imagine dropping out now wouldn't help him much very much except save him from the embarrassment of losing in his home state, which might be a sufficient reason to do so. It appears they made their decision to stay in and that's why Conant went on air to blast the report.

However, I do agree with Josh Marshall.

I'll give @AlexConant this. If CNN ran that report without even giving Rubio camp a chance to reply, refute etc - that's bad, real bad.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 8, 2016