Consider the case of Ted Cruz. In the Republican primary, Cruz stayed in the fight until the ugly end; constantly willing to take Trump’s abuse and slander with a smile, but the former conservative superstar was still loathed by Trump’s party. Though Cruz showed a moment of spine at the GOP convention, his recent capitulation should have redeemed him with Trump voters, right?

Hardly. Cruz is now in a no-man’s land; he’s locked himself into a room with people who loathe him and will gleefully destroy him at the first moment. He didn’t have a lot of friends in the old GOP to begin with, but now he’s a lonely, tragic figure. The look on his face while he phone-banked for Trump from the Texas GOP offices said it all. The GOP establishment will never accept him, the Trumplicans will never accept him as one of their own, and conservatives are left heartbroken and confused about how quickly and violently his star has fallen.

The example of Ted Cruz should teach every endorser of Donald Trump a lesson: No matter what you do, no matter how abject your worship of Trump, nothing suffices when it comes to the new Republican party he’s created. The bastardized version of authoritarian statist “conservatism” led by Donald Trump, and the forces he’s unleashed are coming for you.