Yes, the stupidest thing ever done by a really smart person was Ted Cruz’s strategy for 2013, when he really believed he could become president in 2016 by trying on purpose to shatter his party, pitting the far-right against the somewhat-right center, threatening the career prospects of his colleagues in Congress by making them vote on things against their own interests, and driving them into frenzies of rage. Yes, those colleagues were right to despise him. “Republican regulars, you see, actually hate Ted,” as Carl Cannon informs us. “They have much more antipathy for him than for Hillary. They don’t want to hear Cruz’s voice again when this campaign is over,” much less to see him as president. Or as John Boehner put it, “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

But no, they should have sucked it up and gone in with him anyhow, because a) he’s shown signs of seeming to have understood he was wrong, and of trying to build a diverse coalition, and b) he is all that stands between them and an electoral failure of massive proportions that could destroy almost all of the undercard ticket, and tilt the Supreme Court to the left for the next generation.