So rare, when sensation meets realization.

How often do we hype up, only to be let down? Titanics sink. Hindenburgs blaze.  Y2Ks fizzle. Super Bowls are rarely super. And you just know the new Star Wars is gonna suck.

But somewhere, a pig is flying over its pasture. Somewhere, Satan is getting pelted with snowballs. For I have seen far more miraculous.

I applauded Ted Cruz.

Sure, he’s still crazy as a spotted loon. And there’s a residential suite waiting for him in hell for holding gun rallies at the site of school massacres (where he often eats bacon heated only by the hot muzzle of a freshly-fired AR-15).

Still, there was something gratifying about Cruz’s turning on Donald Trump. Like when a pit bull mauls its dogfighting owner.

Add to that the plagiarism scandal of Trump’s 11th wife, the Hitleresque anger over party dissent and an acceptance speech that Vito Corleone would have envied (Trump may as well have said “Nice country you got here. Shame if something should happen to it…” It was a reality show that lived up to its publicity, if not its promises.

Admit it: Didn’t you expect Chris Christie to burst in anger like a suicide bomber humpback whale when he learned he’d been passed over for vice president in favor of a human cue tip?

None of the carnival acts, however, broached Cruz’s speech, in which he urged — to a thundering chorus of boos — that Republicans vote their consciences in the next  election. Think about that contempt for thoughtfulness for five seconds.

Because the media did not. In our desperate search for something to filibuster 24 hours a day, we blathered over how Cruz had betrayed his party. How he doomed himself for Senate re-election. And we had truckloads of b-roll footage of Trump’s assault on Cruz’s wife and father that we couldn’t wait to rerun.

But ponder the unthinkable: that Cruz may have made the canniest maneuver of his political career.

Consider: When he knew he wasn’t going to win the Republican nomination, what did Cruz have to lose? He is positioned perfectly for a third-party presidential run.  And while a third party won’t win the presidency this year, it could derail one. Cruz remains an icon of the religious right, which has hardly been converted by Trump. Even the Pope took a dig at Donald, suggesting he tone down the homophobia (when devout Christians tell you to take it easy on the LGBT community, you know you overreached). 

And to the fellow reporters predicting doom for Cruz’s political career, remember: We said the same thing about politicians who voted against invading Iraq.

Trump may have won the Michigan primary, but he apparently didn’t learn Detroit’s rule of thumb: Never talk about someone’s mother. You’re likely to get the shit beaten out of you. Or, at the very least, a snap-back.

And Cruz seemed hellbent on delivering one to Trump: “Yo mama, yo daddy, and yo slappy happy grandpappy.”