And so two herds of elephants rumbled off into retirement this week — Ringling Bros.’ pachyderms in Providence Sunday, and last night the teetering-on-the-verge-of-extinction RINOs of the national Republican party.

“We left it all on the field in Indiana,” the last of the RINOs, Sen. Ted Cruz, brayed in Indianapolis before lumbering off in the gathering shadows toward the elephant graveyard.

Just months ago, herds of the beasts roamed the Republican veldt, trampling over voters with impunity. But then a great white hunter arrived, and now their bones and tusks bleach in the hot sun. The jackals who followed the herds — the Huntsmans, the Kaufmans, the Roves, the Preibuses — now pledge fealty to their new master: Donald J. Trump.

“I was witness to the carnage,” Trump was saying last night, referring to the disaster known as free trade. But he could have just as well been talking about the devastation he visited upon all those who ride around the Beltway in their limousines from one country club to another.

Trump begins the general-election campaign this morning as the underdog, but there are important lessons here. First and foremost, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Trump was the Joe Louis of this GOP field, and he was up against the same kind of ham-and-eggers that the Brown Bomber feasted upon — the Bum of the Month Club.

Cruz was just the last of the bums, following in the footsteps of Walker, Bush, Carson, Perry, Christie, Rubio, Fiorina and all the rest of them who thought it was really, really important that all the Club for Growth and the paralyzing snoremongers at the National Review thought highly of them.

Indiana was to the nattering nabobs what Waterloo was to Napoleon, what the Little Big Horn was to Custer, what Dien Bien Phu was to the French. You could watch the disaster unfold in Marion Monday, when Cruz, the last of his breed, took on a Trump supporter in sunglasses.

“We don’t want you,” the protester said in a Larry Bird accent.

“He won’t build that wall for you,” Cruz told him.

“Lyin’ Ted,” the guy said with a smirk. “OK, Lyin’ Ted.”

Cruz then told a fat whopper about Trump asking his voters to beat up non-violent protesters.

“You’re lyin’ like you always do, Lyin’ Ted.”

To which the senator responded, “What word did I say that was a lie?”

This was the sole survivor of the RINO elite, reduced to asking for an exact accounting of his shameless lies. This is what Trump has wrought. He has deputized those whom the Cruzes of the party feel are their chattel to take on their superiors, the soft-handed snobs who have spent the last 25 years double-crossing their voters.

“Indiana don’t want you,” another guy with a Trump sign yelled.

Cruz tried once more: “America is a better country —”

“Without you!” yelled the guy off-camera.

That summed it all up, at least the primary campaign that is now over. The RINOs are gone, and America is indeed a better country. Hillary, you’re next!

Listen to Howie from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on WRKO AM 680.