Gradually, and then suddenly.

The full quote from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises:

 "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.  

"Two ways," Mike said.  "Gradually and then suddenly."

Suddenly things are coming together for Donald Trump.  In hindsight it all seems so obvious and inevitable.   You can look back and see the signs of it but in the then present and moment it wasn't obvious because it could have gone many different ways.  Cruz could have seemed nicer and more electable.  Kasich could have started to win some votes.  There could have been a groundswell for Romney.

None of that happened.  What happened is that Trump kept winning.

Trump getting crowds, staying on the air,  and winning primary election pluralities were part of the "gradually".  The majority wins in New York, Connecticut, RI, Delaware, and Maryland were a still gradual but the speed was picking up.   He was no longer the "plurality" candidate with a low cap. He won.

Think back to the pre-Pennsylvania vote and the widespread talk that Trump might--probably would--win the most votes but not get actual delegates because most Pennsylvania delegates would be unbound, and delegates would be people with deep loyalty to the Republican Party establishment, not to Trump and his crazy disloyal voters.

Then Pennsylvania voted and Trump won handily: Trump 57%, Cruz 22%, Kasich 19%.   It wasn't even close.  That changed things.   Events sped up.

The unbound delegates looked at the results and began telling the press that the people's choice was Trump and they would support him.  A canvas of the delegate winners said that 40 of the 54 unbound delegates said they would support Trump.  They told reporters he had earned it, that the voters wanted it, that denying it to him would cause damage to the GOP because they could not ignore a vote that overwhelming.

They were moving into the Acceptance phase in the process of accepting something that had become inevitable.  Trump isn't so bad.   Trump is a Republican, after all.  They could live with Trump.

Now Indiana votes and people in Indiana are telling pollsters they are supporting Trump in tomorrow's election.   Cruz is saying the election is critical, which raises the stakes for Cruz, since if it isn indeed a last stand, and then he loses, the election moves even deeper into the "suddenly" phase.

Pennsylvania-then-Indiana: 7 days.   It is falling apart for Cruz which means it is coming together for Trump.    We are in that moment.

It is one thing to have multiple choices as alternatives to Trump, then to have still a couple of choices.  But Pennsylvania delegates saw they had only one choice: get aboard or stop being a Republican because denying the people's choice would destroy the party.  They got aboard.  Indiana voters see essentially no choice: it is Trump or pointless chaos.   Cruz is less electable than Trump.   That makes Trump not a choice but an inevitability.   Acceptance.

The Republican party is choosing Trump--gradually and right now suddenly.   

We are in a new phase of the GOP primary, where the party comes together behind Trump.  There will be some groaning and some holdouts but the avalanche is starting, first with voters, then delegates, and soon prominent Republicans as they announce support for Trump.    A great many people are making peace with themselves right now, accepting Trump, and consoling themselves as they settle into the great underlying security of knowing that they had hated Hillary Clinton for years, hated her recently,  will hate her going forward and that their party does in fact stand for something amid all the policy: stopping Hillary. 

They will pay not attention to comments from the Bernie Sanders progressive camp that Hillary Clinton has always been a Third Way Democrat, which means in effect an Eisenhower Republican, plus a foreign policy hawk in the middle of the long standing Republican policy tradition of military intervention.   They will pay not attention to Charles Koch saying that Hillary isn't that bad compared to Trump or Cruz .  Democrats heard those things, but not Republicans.  

Older Republicans questioned whether maybe she murdered Vince Foster, maybe her lover.   Or maybe she was a lesbian; do you notice how she kept calling herself Hillary Rodham Clinton and how her hair was sort of short sometimes?    Younger Republicans have been hearing their whole lives that she is sneaky and untrustworthy--everyone young has heard it, even Democrats--so in a confusing environment of political teams Hillary is a beacon of clarity.

The work of re-shaping the Republican party coalition can be put off and may not even happen.   Maybe the GOP questions its policy on trade and immigration and trickle down, but maybe not, because there is no consensus there.   Changing the policy of a great and diverse political party is hard work and as John Boehner and Paul Ryan know well there are unresolved differences in their party, differences so deep that the majority party in the House of Representatives cannot actually pass a bill.   

But the GOP can coalesce enough to carry on until November and have a candidate and a campaign and fiery speeches and then an election they might actually win under the banner of Trump for President, because there is one clear piece of GOP unity: Hillary Clinton must be stopped.