Pity those poor clowns in the
GOP clown car who think they can be president of the United States. They run around the country kissing the asses
of fat cat donors. They suck up to their bigoted, misogynous, and homophobic gun-toting,
Bible-thumping party base. They raise
tons of money through unfettered PACs and super PACS and super-duper PACs. They attempt to speak to “ordinary” folks at
the Iowa State Fair amid the stench of cow dung and the acrid aroma of fried
foods encased in even more fried batter.
#hocopolitics
They go through all of this but
why aren’t they gaining any traction?
Why are they mired in single digits like they are up to their necks in
Iowa hog waste?
Homophobe Mike Huckabee, who
knows what to do with an Iowa Fair corn dog when he sees one, is flummoxed.
Trump, according to the former governor of Arkansas, is receiving “10 times the
media attention” so no wonder Trump is leading in the polls. Huckabee claims if he enjoyed that amount of
attention, he’d be winning. Right.
It is true that Trump is ahead
of this sorry pack based on the latest polling and by a wide margin. Four years ago Herman “9-9-9” Cain was a
Republican frontrunner as was Michelle Bachman at one time before they both
flamed out as their idiocy caught up with them.
Will it be different in this cycle?
“Teflon Donald” has been able to
insult Mexicans, John McCain’s war service, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and women in
general in short order with relative impunity; his polling numbers remain stout. The GOP pack won’t stand up to him (other
than tepid appeals for him to change his tone) lest the Donald reaches from his
vast arsenal of insults and fires verbal slingshots at them, which is more than
the Democrats are willing to do.
The Dems are gleefully sitting
on the sidelines enjoying the spectacle that is Donald Trump and hoping that
Trump-mania will diminish (if that’s possible) the other GOP contenders and
deflect attention away from their own flawed frontrunner.
It’s not the correct approach. Rather than passively avoiding the fray and
hoping upon hope that Trump stays in the race to injure the eventual nominee,
Democratic strategists should have been seizing on this gift-wrapped opportunity
and swing into attack mode—a tactic that’s not natural to them.
With every Trump gaffe, rather
than condemning the self-centered showman, Dems need to put out releases that
say, “Trump is only saying what the rest of the Republican hopefuls are
thinking but don’t have the courage to say for themselves.” This is not a stretch; few GOP candidates
respond to Trump on the substance of his comments, only to the manner in which
he states them.
It is a win-win strategy for
Democrats. Either the electorate will
tie Trump and his bluster to the GOP field if the Dems keep taunting or his
antics will force the other contenders to confront Trump and risk the verbal
equivalent of a nuclear war. On the
other hand, his outrageous comments can make the other candidates seem less
extreme and more adult by comparison, which is a risk for Democrats.
Of course, as long as Trump
stays in the race he will cause trouble for the other candidates. He has commanded most of the attention
without question and attention is like catnip to a guy like Trump. He’s already proven that he can say just
about anything and get away with it.
Though his policy positions have been scant so far, they’re likely to
mirror those of the rest of the field whose differences aren’t dramatic.
Trump’s distinction is that he
and only he can get the job done and “Make America Great Again.” It’s about him as the savior, not his
particular positions on issues that should matter.
One good thing about Trump is
that he is not a demagogue on social issues like most of the other GOP hopefuls. His pro-life position had evolved to meet the
requirements of the GOP but he is unconvincing.
While he is for “traditional marriage,” he doesn’t offer anti-gay
diatribes as most of his fellow contenders do.
One reason for his relative silence on the topic is that he cannot come
up with a good answer to the question, how do your three marriages represent
traditional marriage?
He also said on Meet the Press on August 16 that being
gay should not be a reason to fire employees of private companies. Only Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and George Pataki
of the other Republican candidates share that view.
How long can or will Trump
remain in the race is the billion dollar question. As long as he’s riding high in the polls, he
is not going anywhere. A significant dip
may cause him to pull out, but that doesn’t seem likely now. Such decisions will have to wait for the
primaries and caucuses to get underway in the winter. That will be a better measuring stick than
current polling.
He has threatened to run as an
independent should he be treated as badly by the GOP. That is unlikely because of the need to
gather so many signatures in all 50 states and the added costs of doing so.
Right now, he is riding the wave
of voter anger and people are backing him no matter how absurd his comments and
unrealistic his positions are. They like
people who call our elected officials “stupid”
and will keep him rolling along, so he remains a nightmare for
establishment Republicans.
The longer the disarray, the
better it is for the Democrats. The
Trump card will help them win the hand…for now.
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