All that — aides who traveled to Indianapolis, a family gathered — suggested Cruz did not make a spur-of-the-moment decision to quit, that it had in fact been something he saw coming and contemplated for days. And on Tuesday night, he did it.

Some aides tried to talk him out of it. They argued that even if Donald Trump won Indiana — little did they know how big it would be — Trump would still have to win a lot of states before he could go to the Republican convention in Cleveland a winner. There was still time, and money, too, for Cruz to keep Trump below the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. To no avail; Cruz had made up his mind.

Figuring out that Cruz had decided before Tuesday night also cast his “meltdown” Tuesday morning in a different light. At a supposedly routine appearance at a restaurant in Evansville, Indiana, Cruz said he would do something he had never done before in the campaign: tell what he really thought about Trump. Then he proceeded to rip Trump up and down and then up and down again. Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer,” a “narcissist,” and much, much more.