Editorial: Never give up, #NeverTrump

Tuesday was a triumph for Donald J. Trump and a disaster for the Republican Party, which faces grim general-election prospects if the blowhard businessman is its presidential nominee.

Trump’s lopsided victory in the Indiana primary, which moved Sen. Ted Cruz to suspend his campaign, is also ominous for the country. Armed with a major-party nomination, even a woefully unqualified underdog could squeak into the Oval Office if the breaks go his way.

We shed no tears for Cruz, a demagogue, obstructionist and conservative culture warrior who would have been a disaster as president. But his withdrawal from the race makes it easier for Trump to argue that his nomination is inevitable.

We aren’t ready to accept that proposition. Quixotic as it may seem, Republicans who have been saying “never Trump” shouldn’t abandon the effort to deny Trump a first-ballot victory at the national convention in Cleveland. Republican voters in California’s primary on June 7 have a special role to play in that rescue operation by supporting Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Trump’s remaining rival for the nomination.

We concede that arresting Trump at this point is the longest of long shots. Tuesday’s victory was the latest installment of a spectacular winning streak in which he has eliminated one opponent after another. The casualty list includes Jeb Bush, a former governor from a political dynasty with ample financial resources, and two senators who were regarded as rising stars in the party: Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Moreover, whatever the party rules say, the expectation for decades in both parties has been that the candidate with the most delegates heading into the convention would be the nominee. But if there is ever a candidate who should be the exception to that rule, it is Trump.

Not only is he devoid of experience in government, his hair-trigger temper, personal pettiness and bigoted comments about women and minorities are the antithesis of the qualities America — and the world — have a right to expect in a president.

We understand that Trump has an outsider’s appeal at a time of deep dissatisfaction with the political establishment (as does Sen. Bernie Sanders, who kept his campaign’s flickering hopes alive by defeating Hillary Clinton in Indiana). We recognize too that Trump has channeled anxieties about cultural change, a long-stagnant economy, globalization and a series of failed military interventions. Even so, it is profoundly disheartening that so many voters would support a candidate whose signature issues include building a wall on the Mexican border and temporarily banning the entry into the United States of every member of a single religion.

The Republican Party can do better. The question is whether the leaders and rank and file of that party are willing to make the effort at this point against odds that may be impossible.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook