There’s no putting a lipstick on this pig. Cruz’s numbers Tuesday night, like his numbers in New York last week, were beyond horrible. With six weeks to go before voting concludes, the man conservatives are hoping can overcome Trump with his clever delegate game and more serious mien is getting 10 to 15 percent of the vote in major states.

It isn’t only that the not-Trump vote is failing to coalesce around Cruz; he’s going backward.

And people are kidding themselves if they think Tuesday night’s results won’t have an effect on voters in Indiana and elsewhere.

The big announcement over the weekend that the Cruz and Kasich campaigns had agreed to a divide-and-conquer strategy to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to win on the first ballot at the Republican convention in July made no difference. Indeed, it only comes into effect with Indiana’s voting.