No, actually that is exactly how primaries (and caucuses as the state party sees fit) and state conventions are supposed to operate.
Both major parties have followed the wisdom the Founders showed in the original Constitution with indirect election of Senators and the Electoral College in building restraints on popular enthusiasms into their presidential nominating processes. The nomination always takes place as a result of action by the party convention. Primaries and caucuses and state conventions select slates of delegates which may or may not be bound to vote for particular candidates on the first ballot (or first and second ballots), and both parties include unbound delegates from the party hierarchy (ironically, given both their party’s name and their contempt for the Founders wisdom, the “Democrats” have a larger groups of such undemocratically selected delegates than the Republicans).
Just to point out -
The GOP’s automatic delegates have been elected in their own right as state party chairs or RNC members. They just don’t need to be elected again specifically to be convention delegates.
And GOP automatic delegates are subject to the same rules for delegate vote allocation as other delegates.
The history of those running has been to concede to the front runner when the candidate sees he cannot win the majority of the delegates.
At no time has someone stayed in just to prevent the front runner from getting the needed delegates to take the nomination to the convention.
This is against the spirit of the primaries.
The Democrats, rejecting their own voters, have instituted the Super Delegates, to decide who wins their nomination and still give the illusion that their voters are choosing the candidate, when we know it is the Party bosses who are doing it.
If all GOP primaries are run like this one, primaries will be meaningless, since the nominating process will always end up back in the convention.
The elites of both parties are terrified of losing power and are circumventing the will of their voters.