Yes. Cruz failed miserably with his base ... the base that was to be his springboard from the South ... Evangelicals.
Let's see, wasn't that when the National Enquirer (Donny Trump's buddy Pecker) pounded Cruz with the one issue five mistresses scandal story? about two, three days before the ballot? And also went off on the "Annointed of God" thing that Cruz didn't say?
Lies, and more well timed lies.
Think that might have influenced that vote a little?
This is not about "limelight" @catfish. Is this really how you see this? It's terribly shallow thinking. 
If Trump loses, by 2020 there will not be a Republican Party able to mount a winning campaign...ever again. By then the majority of Americans, especially our youth, will be seeped in Socialism and will crave it like a drug.
And Conservatism will be a shadow blowing in the wind.
Conservatism will survive. It hasn't had a real home in the GOP for a couple of decades, it only got lip service from candidates who forgot those promises before the votes were completely counted. With the exception of a few TEA party candidates, real grassroots supported conservatives the GOPe either underestimated or just could not stop, conservatives haven't had a snowball's chance in Hell of getting past the Party.
It's time we end the fairy tale that the GOP is any home to conservatism. Being marginally to the right of the Democrats is not 'Conservatism', it is only a relative thing, and Conservatism isn't about a half degree of relative support for the Constitution, it is about support, period. It isn't about saving just one life (although they all count) but about saving thousands per day, it isn't about more efficient totalitarianism, it is about Liberty and smaller government, period.
That moral, legal, Constitutional relativism is what has killed the GOP and made it more leftist than Jack Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey.
If 2020 is important to you, you'll need to set aside some deep-seated anger and choose wisely in 2016. If we lose the WH in 2016, we lose it for good.
We, who? The GOP? The new Whigs? Because that is the road the GOP has taken.
Conservatives only have to find a new rally point and regroup, without being misled by the lies of a Party which has treated Conservatives with condescending contempt, assuming Conservatives have no place else to go. Maybe there isn't a major political machine to jump on, but we can build one--after all, who tirelessly built the GOP? Who were the people who filled every niche from grassroots up? Well, we can do that elsewhere, where the existing monolithic opposition to Conservative Principle does not have to be torn down and rebuilt.
I am looking hard at the Constitution Party, because most of what I want is already there. I think Conservatives of any stripe would do well to do the same. A Conservative would not win the White House under the GOP flag, anyway. You folks had the chance, and look what got the nomination.
