Truly Super Tuesday for Presumptive GOP Nominee Donald Trump, as Ted Cruz, John Kasich Quit

Who knew? Indiana turned out to be the graveyard where Sen. Ted Cruz interred his presidential hopes.

Which is to say that our long national nightmare — call it the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination or “17 Little Indians” or “The Citizen Trump Reality Show” — is over. (Or may just have gone to a new level.)

The next one — the national race for the presidency — is about to begin in earnest. (Or at least on the day when Sen. Bernie Sanders calls it a day, which could take a while.)  And, yes, it’s official:  GOP chairman Reince Pribus  has declared Donald Trump the presumptive nominee of the party.

For now, however, we can be thankful for many things: Tuesday is now just the second day of the week, super no longer.  The second tier is gone, and so is the first tier, except for one. With no primary races to predict and maps to fill in, CNN immediately set about filling in a national map in which Donald Trump becomes president.  Please, guys. One nightmare at a time.

Here is the headline of the hour, in simple, Trumpian terms: “Donald Trump Won, Ted Cruz Quit.”

Did we forget John Kasich again?  So has everybody else.  Kasich — or as he has always called himself, the grown-up in the room — was still in the race last evening, on the track to nowhere.  He has become, for better or worse, the forgotten man.   Kasich stuck it out in Indiana long enough to get a taste of the back of Trump’s hand — metaphorically speaking — when Trump called him out on his “disgusting eating habits.” But wait — this just in — it’s official: Kasich has suspended his campaign.

Cruz, whose remaining chance of ending up with the nomination rested with the hope that Trump would not get the required number of delegates, insisted all along for the past two weeks that Indiana was shaping up to be make-or-break, hugely important and critical in the GOP race.  He was absolutely right. It buried him.

The Indiana portion of the GOP road show grew increasingly bizarre as it went along.  Cruz, in a weirdly desperate move, chose former business CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as his running mate, a move that’s usually saved for the general election.  She had supported Cruz after she dropped out of the race and at one point had been the target of one of Trump’s less classy criticisms and stood up to him.  There was no help there, other than a musical moment in which Fiorina, who also literally managed to stumble and fall at one point, sang to Cruz’s children.

It got worse for Cruz. Former House Speaker John Boehner awoke from a long political slumber to attack Cruz, calling him, among other things, “Lucifer in the flesh” and an SOB, for reasons that remain obscure, an occasion which took away from whatever Cruz was hoping to accomplish.  Trump called him “desperate and demented” and then made mention of a National Enquirer article that hinted that Cruz’s father was connected to the Kennedy assassination.  This was done almost casually, like throwing a grenade in an empty parking lot.

Cruz on the last day erupted or imploded, right before the voting began, calling Trump a “serial philanderer” and a “narcissist.” (Tell us something we don’t know.)

Nothing much helped.  Trump got over 50 percent of the vote and all the delegates. Cruz got to make a sorrowful speech in which he did not get behind Trump or say anything warm and fuzzy about him.  He exited clumsily, even managing to elbow his wife in the face as they headed for a hug. The video is streaming endlessly online.

Trump, surrounded by wife and children, stayed calmed and seemed a little amazed that what had started out with such strange drama was becoming a reality.  He was nice to Cruz, the man he had continually called “Lying Ted” just, oh, minutes ago.  He called Cruz “one hell of a competitor. He’s one tough guy, and he’s got an amazing future.”

Trump was not so kind to Hillary Clinton. “We’re going after Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She will not be a great president. She will not be a good president. She will be a poor president.”

That remains to be seen. First, Clinton has to  win out over that pesky Bernie Sanders who beat her convincingly in Indiana by a 53 to 47 percentile margin — once again buoying his hopes that where there’s a win, there’s a way.  Clinton, talking to coal miners in West Virginia, ignored Sanders and continued to focus on the fight ahead against Trump.

It turned out, in the end once again, that this particular Tuesday, was super indeed.  Tuesday and Indiana decided who the GOP nominee would be, even if it did not quite yet determined the fate of the Democrats.

Tuesday and Indiana guaranteed that in spite of all the efforts of the mysterious GOP establishment Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president.  If the New York Daily News is to be taken seriously, it also signaled the end of the Grand Old Party, as we or they know it.  It may be that, for the Republican Party, the only worse thing that could happen than Trump winning the nomination is Trump winning the election.

All of this is no small thing in the scheme of things and the way of the world.  Trump is no longer just a celebrity, a mogul, a reality show host.  And if he is only these things, then the race for president will turn into his very own reality show.

But for now, Trump is as real as it gets: Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for President of the United States.