Cruz is crushed in Indiana and is behind Trump in California 54 to 20. So he did next best thing: he quit the race.

What follows is an excerpt written by Larry Sabato,  founder of the Crystal Ball and political professor at the University of Virginia.  

But first,  an editorial comment:  

Finally,  Trump stands alone  (I don't count Kasich) and the world of the GOP Establishment is filled with spinning heads.  Bill Crystal,  George Will,  Jeb Bush and others,  have no intentions of supporting Trump.  But worse than that,  these folks appear willing to work for Trumps defeat in the coming election,  hoping,  when it is all said and done,  that they can come in, pick up the peaces,  and reconstruct the GOP into a viable, political  institution   . . . . .   as before.  

Problem:  The millions of folks who have and will support a Trump candidacy will never come back the GOP if the same leadership and bullshit are in place.  And without a voting base,  you have no power.  In that reality,  the GOP will never be the same.

Trump is not the beginning,  he is the end of a 10 year rebellion within the voting ranks of the GOP.  

A brief history of the "rebellion."  

2006 to the Present Time:
Leadership had more than fair warning.  "Smaller government" was always and only an empty leadership promise.  A "Balanced budget" was won during the Clinton years, but,  lost with the succeeding GOP leadership, leadership turning its back on responsible money management at the highest level.    And no one stood against the tide of the incoming socialist threat/take over.  

 So,  in 2006,  the conservative activist base stayed away from the polls,  and the GOP lost its hold on the Senate and the House.   

But lessons were not learned,  and in 2008,  the GOP leadership ran McCain,  another enemy to the conservative cause.  More people stayed away,  and the Progressive Socialist Party won the presidency and super majorities in the House and Senate.  Still,  incredibly,  the lesson was not learned.  In 2010,  the Teaparty had risen and won the midterm election,  giving the House back to the GOP   . . . .   yet Boehner inconceivably denied any role of leadership to teaparty folks.  2012,  Mitt ran with Establishment support,  and millions stayed away,  again.  And,  again,  the lesson of compromise with the teaparty was ignored.   2014,  the conservative base won the midterms in record setting style     . . . . . . .   and the McConnell/Boehner cabal ignored the conservative base   . . . . . . . . . .   and that base,  today,  is saying,  "Go to hell.  Party politics and ideology mean little to us,  because it got us nothing."  

Trump came onto the seen   . . . . . .  and the clowns in the GOP Establishment do not realize what has happened to them.  Putting the party back together,  again, may be something that unites them,  but what good will that be when your voting base has left the building    . . . . . .     and it has.  
 
Trump has not won me over, yet,  but I am much further away from the leadership of those I once trusted than I am from him.  Mark Levin rails but ran to Trump in the very beginning of his campaign.  George Wills,  is a noted "intellectual" in the GOP,  a man I still respect  . . . . . .   except in this case, and is so over whelmed  with his own political bias, that he has actually lost IQ percentages.     I do not understand "stupid,"  especially when smart people commit to the practice.  But I do understand that the thirst for political power is going to drive some I once admired,  over the edge and into oblivion.  

So we wait to see what Trump has in mind.  He has surrounded himself with a host of very serious conservatives,  folks willing to play a "conservative populace" role.  Folks like Scott Brown,  Sarah Palin, Dr Ben Carson,  Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani,  Newt Gingrich and others    . . . . .   men and women who will help to keep him close to the farm.  

Oh,  I almost forgot.  Here is that article by Sabato: 

After months of obsessing over the delegate math, Ted Cruz’s exit from the race has rendered the calculations moot. John Kasich remains in the race, but he’s a minor candidate at this point. However, Trump starts the general election race in a precarious position. How will Trump reconcile the rest of the party to his leadership? The early signs are ominous. The Republican Party’s intellectual core is mainly irretrievably hostile; some (such as widely-read columnist George Will) have called for an active conservative effort to produce a 50-state defeat for Trump.

A handful of elected officials have come aboard the Trump bandwagon, but mainly there is public silence and private anguish. Perhaps that changes now that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has declared Trump the presumptive nominee and the #NeverTrump movement finds itself without a plausible opponent for Trump in the GOP primary. Still, major corporations that usually spend lavishly on conventions, and scores of senior politicians sharing a ballot with Trump, may avoid Cleveland altogether.

Another key unknown is whether the universe of candidates expands. Will a “real Republican” ticket file to give disillusioned conservatives the incentive to vote -- and thus possibly save a GOP Senate and House, because they will join most of Trump’s voters in backing down-ballot Republicans? Will the Libertarian, Constitution, and Green parties find a way to take advantage of the major-party turmoil to expand their turf? Could this splintering produce a plurality president with well under 50% support in the electorate -- or even, as improbable as it seems now, throw the election into the House of Representatives? We would bet against it, but months ago we couldn’t fathom that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee.

Our views on the Electoral College outcome of a Clinton-Trump match-up haven’t changed since we published our “Trumpmare” map a month ago. If anything, we wonder whether our total of 347 EVs for Clinton to 191 EVs for Trump is too generous to the GOP.

Still, party polarization will probably help Trump. In the end, millions of Republicans will hold their nose and vote against Hillary and for Trump, just as millions of Democrats will put aside their hesitations about Clinton to stop Trump. Negative partisanship -- casting a ballot mainly against the other party’s nominee rather than for your party’s candidate -- will be all the rage in November. This will be especially likely after the vicious scorched-earth campaign on both sides that is coming. Someone could make a fortune at polling places selling clothespins for the nostrils.

However, we do recognize at least some upset potential in Trump. Third terms for the White House party are difficult to secure. President Obama is, more or less, at 50% job approval -- pretty good, in fact, for this president. But an unexpected economic plunge, major terrorist success, international crisis, or serious scandal could subtract critical percentage points from Clinton. Voters are not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, so intertwined is her fate with Obama’s, and so fixed is her scarred image after decades in the hothouse of politics.

Just as important, Clinton can lose if she and her team smugly take victory for granted. You are halfway to losing when you think you can’t lose. Students of President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign against the doomed Barry Goldwater recognize that LBJ wouldn’t let his lieutenants rest on favorable polls; he ran a superb if brutal effort against Goldwater, and never let up. Much the same was true for President Richard Nixon in 1972. While he and his team schemed to insure George McGovern became his opponent, using dirty tricks against some of McGovern’s Democratic foes, Nixon had tasted defeat and near-defeat too often in his career to rest easy for even a day. Will overconfidence generated by favorable surveys cripple the Clinton campaign?

Trump has forced the political world to ingest a sizable dose of humility. Even many of political science’s much-vaunted statistical models that attempt to predict election results cannot account for a candidate like Trump -- either because he overrides or suspends some of the normal “rules” of politics, or because he proves that parties do not always nominate electable candidates.

The stakes are high in any presidential election, but for once, that old standby, “this is the most important election of our lifetime” may actually be true. In addition to the candidates’ dramatically different visions of foreign, domestic, economic, and social policies, the future of the Supreme Court is on the line -- and maybe the shape or very existence of the Republican Party as well. Given the mood of Americans, one song with no chance of a comeback in 2016 is Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Back to the future with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: “Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?” Mr. Thompson, we’re about to find out   . . . . . .   read the full article,  here.