So help me, I didn’t think it was possible for any campaign to be more entertaining than the 2012 campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
Thank you, Donald Trump, for smashing my expectations for the 2016 campaign.
The Donald has managed to do what I thought was impossible: He’s managed to make the likes of Michele Bachmann andĀ Herman Cain look and sound almost reasonable, rational and mainstream.
He’s shot off his mouth about Mexican immigrants who come here illegally, stereotyping them as murderers, rapists, drug dealers — along with “some good people.” He’s called Mitt Romney a “loser” because he got beat in a campaign that he should have won; he’s challenged whether Ted Cruz of Texas is a legitimate candidate for the presidency, given that he was born in Canada.
And now he’s said John McCain isn’t really a war hero, even though he was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, while saying in the next breath that he likes “those who weren’t captured.”
Other Republicans have condemned Trump’s buffoonery. So have Democratic candidates.
It’s been an amazing campaign to date and we’re still months away from those Iowa caucuses and the lead-off New Hampshire primary.
Trump has managed to suck all the air out of every room he enters. The other candidates? They can’t be heard above all the ruckus created by Trump’s amazing ability to call attention to himself.
Four years ago, Bachmann and Cain — along with Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum — tried to raise a stink about this and/or that. They all were “frontrunners” for a time. Then came Romney, with all of his money and political connections, to win the GOP nomination.
Now we have Trump, who reportedly has much more wealth than Romney — and who brags about his portfolio incessantly — making a lot of racket.
But here’s the deal. He won’t be nominated. He’s going out with his guns blazing (figuratively, of course). Someone else will be nominated. If I had to bet on the next GOP nominee, I’d put my money today on either former Florida Gov. John Ellis (Jeb) Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But they’re so boring.
Trump has turned this campaign into a circus.
Way to go, Donald. You’ve made the preceding cast of GOP contenders/pretenders look like statespersons.