The Last Republican Standing, Presumably

This past Tuesday marked the first time in a very long time that Tuesday wasn’t Super Tuesday, if you discount the fact that Bernie Sanders won another primary, this time in West Virginia.

But it wasn’t Super Tuesday. It was instead, as they might say in the halls of Trump Tower: Day One in the Presidency in Waiting of Presumptive Republican Party Presidential Nominee Donald Trump.

Or the Twilight of the Republicans, the Beginning of the End of Days of the Not Feeling So Good Grand Old Party.

Or it’s just another Tuesday with NCIS and the ageless Jethro Gibbs, and the last two episodes of very special agent Anthony DiNozzo.

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is the Presumptive Presidential Nominee of the Republican Party (not to be confused with presumptuous or pretentious). The Donald — who was apparently planning ahead when he copyrighted the phrase “make America great again” before announcing that he was running — is it.

No matter how Trump’s May 12 confab with Speaker of the House and GOP party chair Paul Ryan, and another meeting with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, went, it might be worth looking at how the U.S. electoral process got to this point.

There is, of course, nothing much anybody in the GOP ranks or, for the moment, anywhere else can do about it. In the immediate aftermath of this development, NBC anchor Lester Holt made a beeline for Trump Tower for an interview in which Trump said he would like to see the coming national campaign elevated to a higher level. He said he would be nice to Hillary if Hilary were nice to him.

That pretty much evaporated when he called out Bill Clinton on his scandalous past with women and said Hillary Clinton was an enabler and so forth and so on.

That was Trump being Trump, as was his reaction to the fact that House Speaker Paul Ryan could not as yet find it in his heart to endorse him. Trump was stumped; he didn’t see that coming and was peeved.

Trump is apparently under the impression that he has already won the election, announcing that Chris Christie would be managing his transition team. It’s fair to say that Christie probably had a bigger job in mind, but Trump hasn’t actually won the election yet. He also said he would be making announcements about his Supreme Court appointments very soon. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and candidate for president — first out among the many — volunteered that he might be happy to be vice president.

This is what the great 2016 election cycle has come to. Nobody saw that coming. They saw the 17 other people coming like the running of the bulls and assumed that out of this cloud of dust a somewhat moderate candidate might emerge — a very conservative candidate who could reach out to all the voters who voted for Obama twice and snatch a few here and there, just enough to win. That would be Mr. Bush (Jeb), Mr. Rubio (Marcolito) and possibly Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, whose most notable accomplishments in the campaign were to quit early and to win Wisconsin for Ted Cruz. That would not be what’s-his-name, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.

It turned out that the guy who could turn out the voters was Trump, former host of “The Apprentice,” who spent most of his life on the campaign trail and the rest of it on Twitter and Instagram, just like the rest of us.

Mr. Trump won in spite of the fact that he had little or no impulse control and said and did things that would have knocked out a candidate for alderman, dogcatcher and police chief any other time. He won in spite of the fact that his speeches were notably devoid of content, that he was fair-to-mediocre during debates (the ones he showed up for) and said most of the candidates were “nice” or “a disaster” or “low energy” (Jeb Bush) or untruthful (“Lyin’ Ted”).

This is not the space to talk about Trump’s policies. He seems to be willing to change them if they get him a win, and so cannot be relied upon to offer a clue as to what he actually may think.

It still seems strange that when there were only two and a half people left standing in the GOP race, one of them would be Ted Cruz, perhaps the least liked person on television apart from the girl who calls her car Brad, as in “and then I totaled Brad.”

One by one, 17 little Indians, dropped out, quit, evaporated or disappeared.

Welcome to the Age of Trump, 24/7. Not to worry. Late polls show Trump and Hillary Clinton in a close race. Let the games begin — or continue, as it were.