On Tuesday, Mr. Cruz ended his campaign, his loss in Indiana extinguishing any chance of denying Mr. Trump the nomination.
“Together we left it all on the field in Indiana,” Mr. Cruz told supporters here as cries of “Nooo!” rained from the crowd. “We gave it everything we’ve got. But the voters chose another path.”
Yet to dismiss Mr. Cruz as an also-ran would diminish his unlikely feat in outlasting nearly every rival: His calls for conservative purity were, for better or worse, the most consistent message in the field, his rage against the “Washington cartel” a signal of the nation’s ever-dimming view of its leaders....