Well, the Republican disposition finally won out. As a party, we lack the stomach for the intra-party fights the Democrats revel in, and we always have. As I’ve noted before, we never have had a competitive primary that lasted past Super Tuesday, at least since 1976. Settling on front runners is what we do as a party – even when it is obvious that the front runner is heading for a drubbing in November, as it was in 1996.

For some weeks now, the party has been looking for an excuse to quit this increasingly ugly fight between two guys that weren’t particularly well liked. Trump’s victory in New York – though totally expected and irrelevant to the delegate calculus – gave them the excuse. Then, Cruz’s victory in the state party conventions – which was the right strategic move – caused voters to look forward to the possibility of an actual contested convention with horror.

At some point, a critical mass of Republican voters just gave up. They decided they didn’t want this thing to drag on all the way through July and beyond. Many of them, if Gallup is to be believed, just didn’t like Cruz very much. And so they decided just to get this over with and let Trump have his shot at Hillary, for better or for worse.

Well, the answer to that particular question is “worse,” but the die is cast. And the bloody, intra-party fight is over, at least for now. After Trump loses in a November landslide, the party will realize that they have really just kicked the can down the road. The Trumpkins are going to try to take over the state party apparatuses just like the Paultards did. They are going to discover that after 5 months of the RNC flogging Trump, there might not be people there to stop them this time. And they might discover that a huge portion of their voting base is gone forever.

But in the meantime, the voters in Indiana and elsewhere who just gave in to Trump have deluded themselves into believing that the fight is over. And for now, they will be allowed their delusion.