Donald Trump, Jr., left, with his siblings Ivanka, Eric, and Tiffany Trump, at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

Tuesday night was the last chance for the Republican Party to lodge a broad, self-respect-preserving objection to Donald Trump, and a second chance for the Trump family to appear polished, after Melania Trump was humiliated by being sent onstage on Monday night to recite words that, it turned out, had been borrowed from Michelle Obama. The first of those projects failed outright. The results on the second are not fully in.

The opening for Trump's remaining Republican opponents was the roll-call vote to formally nominate him. The day before, they had lost a struggle over a rules change that, if a dozen other unlikely things happened, could have theoretically led to Trump being denied the nomination. Now there was only the bravado of the true parliamentary folklorist. Just before the Convention session began, at around 5:45 P.M., Senator Mike Lee, of Utah, an ally of Ted Cruz, was in Utah's section on the floor, talking to reporters about the implausibility of various scenarios. "So it's over?" one asked him. "Yeah," Lee said.

A few minutes later, Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, put Trump's name into nomination, calling him "a warrior and a winner." As Sessions walked off, to applause, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who was chairing the proceedings, came on to remark that the evening was "off to a good start," by which he may only have meant that no one had made the situation more awkward for him, as though good manners could vindicate his accommodation of Trump. Ryan called seconders to the stage: Representative Chris Collins, of New York, the first congressman to endorse Trump, who told the delegates, "Our country has no borders"; and Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster, of South Carolina, who said that he believed he was the first elected official to endorse Trump, and told the delegates, "Ladies and gentleman, this is not a dream. . . . It's deadly serious." (Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump; this was the men's reward.) McMaster mentioned, as one of Trump's fine qualities, his willingness to "pose for countless photographs."

Then came the roll call. It wasn't unanimous. A few of the delegations insisted that they had different counts than the Convention secretary did, and there were empty seats in the Minnesota and Virginia delegations, among others, but few enough that it seemed more like a slink-out than a walkout. There were stray delegates complaining bitterly on the margins. But, with a couple of exceptions (Maine, for example), the delegations that had many votes bound to Cruz announced those numbers almost apologetically, followed quickly by assurances that Donald Trump would be the next President. The loudest booing was reserved for delegations that didn't seem adequately enthusiastic about Trump. Otherwise, there was much cheering.

Members of the New York delegation during the roll call to support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President. Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker

The Never Trumpers didn't really fail because they were outflanked by people who were more clever about manipulating the rules than they were; they failed because they offered no alternative to Trump. They had no candidate, aside from the maneuvering of Cruz’s allies for 2020. They had no articulated set of principles that might specifically counter Trump's bigotry or jingoism. (Cruz also takes extreme positions.) Most of all, in the first two days in Cleveland, they failed because there wasn’t enough fuel for them to spark on the Convention floor, no emotional tinder of deep discomfort. Even if the delegates disliked Trump but thought that he could beat Hillary Clinton (and the hostility to her in Cleveland is notably personal), that motive led to the same place. The bulk of the delegates—however they had started out and whatever they might have said in the primary campaigns or even as they walked into the Quicken Loans Arena—acted as if they were glad to be there for Trump. He had them.

And so the fight for the 2016 Republican nomination effectively ended with a tableau: Ivanka, Eric, and Tiffany Trump standing with their brother, Donald Trump, Jr., under the New York sign, as he announced the state's votes for Trump. ("One of the great honors of my life," he said later.) In keeping with tradition, Michigan had passed, to make sure that New York, the nominee's home state, was able to put him over the top. Ivanka put her hand over her heart in an expression of gratitude.

The tally was seventeen hundred and twenty-five delegates for Trump, four hundred and eighty-four for Cruz, a hundred and twenty-five for Kasich, a hundred and twenty-three for Marco Rubio, and single digits for a few others, reflecting delegates bound early in the process. No face-saving talk of a Republican schism could occlude the reality that the Party had made a candidate of casual hatred who shrugs at the rule of law its standard-bearer, and that he had over a thousand delegates more than anyone else.

Later, immediately after Chris Christie, in a dark and accusatory speech about Clinton, had prodded the crowd to chant "Guilty" and "Lock her up!," Tiffany Trump walked onto the stage, seeming like brightness itself. Tiffany is the daughter of Marla Maples, Trump's second wife, and she recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, her father's alma mater. "Please excuse me if I'm a little nervous," she said, seeming not nervous at all. Instead, she appeared ready to break into a song-and-dance number. Her father, she said, was "a natural-born encourager." She knew that he was proud of her. She liked to reread his comments on her kindergarten report card.

Donald, Jr., spoke soon afterward, and his speech was well received. (There were, briefly, questions about what it meant, plagiarism-wise, that his speechwriter had borrowed from some of his own earlier writings, but those faded.) He portrayed his father as the kind of boss who spots a blue-collar guy with talent and promotes him, because he sees no appeal in "fancy colleges and degrees." (Trump, as it happens, brags relentlessly about his Penn diploma, and those of his children, but Donald, Jr., like his father, skimmed past contradictions.) He picked up on various conspiratorial scenarios, saying that Clinton had suppressed the energy industry because she was "beholden to her buddies in the Middle East," and that she might use "the highest office in the land as a path to personal enrichment." He had the grudges to go with his younger sister's glitter—the Trumpian one-two. He spent the requisite time on Benghazi and gun rights. The delegates applauded loudly several times, never more than when Donald, Jr., compared public-school teachers to Soviet department-store clerks.

Eric Trump will speak tomorrow night, and Ivanka will follow him on Thursday, introducing their father. She is the one who might have the talent to fully win back that lost Melania moment. There are many younger Trumps to watch this campaign, each waiting for his or her chance. Donald Trump already has his; the Republican Party just gave it to him.