Politics

After Indiana, American politics have entered a new period.

For eight months, Donald Trump’s electoral strength has astounded, shocked, and dismayed the political class and terrified the inner circles of the GOP. The outer-borough New Yorker, pushy WASP (Russell Baker’s phrase of some thirty years ago), developer and TV star with flamboyant personality, bold and bombastic, a militant centrist, an Eisenhower Republican with a Berlusconi temperament, has managed to carry out what amounts to a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, or at least its presidential process.

You may be all too familiar with those exhausting political-tagging debates involving this politician or that intellectual—and whether he or she is “really” a conservative (or a “real conservative”), a liberal, a libertarian, or a classical liberal. Or perhaps we should add a “paleo” or a “neo” to the label.

Eliot Cohen has an idea:

It is time for a third candidate, and probably for a third party.

Some people will dismiss this notion as absurd. However, only those prescient enough to have forecast Trump’s success have the standing to certify impossibilities. If the Trump candidacy has blown up every other aspect of political conventional wisdom, why not this one?

Ted Cruz has dropped out of the presidential race:

Crushed in the Indiana primary he had declared would decide the fate of the Republican presidential campaign, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday night ended his presidential campaign, essentially ceding the nomination to front-runner Donald Trump.

#Breaking: Ted Cruz drops out of the 2016 presidential race https://t.co/7eshI3SCbQ pic.twitter.com/fO5Q3c4hBi

— CNN (@CNN) May 4, 2016

As Politico reports,

Ted Cruz is quitting the presidential race, according to campaign manager Jeff Roe, ending one of the best-organized campaigns of 2016 after a series of stinging defeats left Donald Trump as the only candidate capable of clinching the nomination outright.