Barring a (not implausible) meltdown among Democrats or their almost certain nominee, Hillary Clinton, Cruz would have lost in November. He is, after all, to the right of Trump on just about every issue and lacks the charm or charisma or ideological flexibility to make his positions palatable to a majority of Americans. But now, Cruz gets to fall back on his cushy $174,000-a-year job as a U.S. senator, with about $9 million left in his campaign war chest and no campaign debt. Presumably, his wife gets to return to her job at Goldman Sachs.

Meanwhile, Cruz has raised his national profile to new heights, and he no longer has to travel the country shaking countless hands, eating terrible food, mangling easy sports references, threatening hecklers with a good spanking, and enduring sharp mockery from Trump, his supporters, and late-night comedians. But those are all fringe benefits. Losing to Trump was a winning proposition for Cruz because winning the Republican nomination would have destroyed Cruz’s entire political brand.

From his run for Senate in Texas to his self-styled principled stands once he got to Washington, Cruz has portrayed himself as an untainted, unwavering paragon of conservatism. On the presidential campaign trail, he was the principled “constitutional conservative” that real conservatives could trust. That served Cruz well in the Republican primaries, but it would have been a Barry Goldwater–level disaster in the general election — unless Cruz were somehow able to move significantly to the center. And even if he had somehow been able to pull off a general-election pivot, it would have ruined him — being a principled conservative is Cruz’s thing.