Ted Cruz wrapped himself in Trump’s cloak early in the primary and praised the man, in the hope of picking up his supporters when Trump inevitably failed. Had he not embraced Trump, he would be in about the same place as Rand Paul: invisible. Cruz was never going to pull it off. He did as best as a man of his limited political skills could do and won the same respectable second place that Rick Santorum achieved in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008. He played the game to a win, from his perspective. (Of course, being Ted Cruz, he blew it all by denouncing Trump in the most damaging way and then endorsing him at the worst possible time.)

But the real problem is the profile-builders. Probably half the field qualifies as such. Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich, for instance, might not have had the stature or reputation that would qualify them for automatic appointments. They needed to run to achieve that. By getting on the debate stage and, in Kasich’s case, lasting till he was among the final three, they raised their profiles. Then there’s the whole slew of retired and out-of-date politicians who wanted one more chance at glory.

There’s plenty of perks to being a failed candidate. There’s always the next cycle. There are books deals, TV shows, or just good old-fashioned fame. Just getting on TV on the debate stage is enough for some egos. By lasting as long as they could, each of these candidates did win, in some degree. By dropping out early for the greater good, they would have personally lost.

So we see that each of these candidate did employ the best strategy, considering the final results. The primaries are set up in such a way that a candidate can “win” just by running. This proved disastrous to the party as a whole because it created an extremely divided field. I’m not sure what game this is, but it’s not the prisoner’s dilemma. If it doesn’t have a name, we can call it the “politicians dilemma.”