Texas Senator Ted Cruz exited the Republican presidential race humbly once he realized that Donald Trump was likely to take every one of Indiana’s 57 delegates in Tuesday’s primary contest, stating.

From the beginning, I’ve said I’d continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears the path has been foreclosed.

Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we’ve got. But the voters chose another path. And so, with heavy heart but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign.

Donald Trump was gracious in accepting Cruz’s decision:

Ted Cruz. I don’t know if he likes me, but he is one hell of a competitor. He is one smart guy. He has got an amazing future….

I understand how Ted feels, and Heidi, and their whole beautiful family.

The political winds have shifted perceptibly, with Trump’s romp in Indiana exposing the false assumptions made less than a year ago: Trump was a curiosity only, not to be taken seriously, while Clinton was preparing for a coronation in July at the Democratic National Convention. But with Bernie Sanders handing Clinton a smashing and stunning defeat on Tuesday (Clinton led in nearly every poll taken prior to the primary) and his verbalized determination to stay in the race to the bitter end, there is now a role reversal amounting to what some are calling a sea change in American politics.

In past elections Democrats rallied around their favorite candidate, while Republicans made every attempt to demolish and obliterate each other. Once the Republican survivor was known, damaged and weakened from the fight, the Democrat nominee descended, like a Siamese fighting fish, to finish off that survivor in the national election. This year it is Trump waiting while Sanders, with his incessant and effective attacks on Clinton, damages her and calls into question the “coronation” assumption made at the beginning of the contest.

Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted just minutes after polls closed Tuesday night: “Donald Trump will be presumptive GOP nominee, we all need to unite and focus on defeating Hillary Clinton.” This from the head of the party whose supporters moved heaven and earth to neuter and emasculate Trump as he continued, despite its attacks, to roll over his opponents.

When far-left global editorial director for the Huffington Post, Howard Fineman, conceded that Trump has more than a shot at winning in November, one finally became aware of just how massive that sea change is. Fineman listed several good reasons why Trump could sweep the November elections, summarized here:

• The economy is headed into recession with Clinton, the heir-apparent under Obama, taking the blame;

• Not since 1988, 28 years ago, has a two-term president been replaced by someone from his own party;

• Clinton will be faced with the noisy and increasingly disruptive Sanders as the Democratic primaries come to a close, stealing her limelight and possibly taking her crown;

• Clinton has much more baggage than has Trump going into the general election; and

• That baggage includes the inescapable conclusion that Clinton is part of the hated establishment, a very symbol of the corruption that pervades Washington, D.C., and is driving the dissension prevalent in both presidential contests this year.

Fineman admits that there are at least five large blue (heavily Democratic) states where Trump “could compete, especially for the votes of … former Reagan Democrats: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and, yes, Indiana.”

Trump could conceivably get a little help from the Department of Justice and the FBI as it finishes up its investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of unsecured e-mail servers, allowing vital state secrets to be easily lifted by foreign enemies. Former Judge Andrew Napolitano has been watching that investigation and recently wrote that the final straw might just be the testimony of one Bryan Pagliano (obtained by granting him immunity from prosecution). The former IT director for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Pagliano was hired to maintain her private e-mail server while she served as Obama’s secretary of state. He deliberately and intentionally opened the State Department’s e-mail streams, both public and secret, to Clinton’s server in her home in Chappaqua, New York. She paid him $5,000 to commit the crime, which is why he demanded immunity before squealing. Now that he has said his piece, Napolitano stated:

The prosecutors will basically tell [Clinton’s] lawyers that they have evidence of the criminal behavior of their client and that before they present it to a grand jury, they want to afford Mrs. Clinton an opportunity … to challenge it.

This effectively puts her into a corner: If she declines, voters will conclude, finally and at last, that she does have something to hide after all. But if she agrees, those prosecutors, masters at their trade, will easily entrap her into repeating the lies she has used to cover her tracks up until now.

Wrote Napolitano: “If she were to talk to federal prosecutors and FBI agents, they would catch her in many inconsistencies, as she has spoken with great deception in public about this case.”

All she can do is delay making that decision. But November is still six months away, and in an election year that is a very long time indeed.

It’s possible, when all is said and done, that Trump will not be meeting Clinton in the general election, but instead her present saddle burr: far-left socialist Bernie Sanders. That could turn the election of 2016 into one reminiscent of 1932, the start of the New Deal, or the 1980 election with the burst of freedom following the election of Ronald Reagan.

In an election year full of surprises, that might be the biggest surprise of all.

A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .