The Donald

I couldn't resist writing about this.  He's like one of those mosquitoes that you think will finally go away when the sun comes up, but he doesn't.  He says things like that once-removed uncle of yours when he's a little too liquored up, but he doesn't apologize in the morning.  In all, he's a hot mess steaming his way through the political scene right now.

The one.

The only.

The Donald.

Many pundits have tried to discredit him.  Expose him for the true man under the animal pelt.  Rather, they have only fueled the fire behind his poll numbers and the fervor of his rhetoric.  It seems that every week what we would expect to happen to him has not, and there's only one question on everyone's mind.

What is the future of Trump?

We all know the eventual fate.  Donald Trump will never be president of the United States of America.  What everyone is trying to guess is how he will drop out of the political scene between now and then.  Will he run as a third party candidate?  Will he actually win the Republican nomination.  Won't that just be like that Ross Perot thing back in 1992?  In this post I'm going to try to predict the future for Republicans while trying to tackle these conundrums.

No.  The Donald will not win the Republican nomination.  Force against him will amount once the lower end Republican candidates start dropping out.  Once that happens, Republicans, hopefully rational ones, are going to realize that their most likable candidates who have the best chance of grabbing those purple states are Bush and Kasich.  It won't be instant gratification.  It's going to be a slow process of voters throwing support to the better candidates.  My personal recommendation for any Republican caucus would be Kasich.  Watch out for him over these next 11 months towards the convention.  His poll numbers are pretty low right now, but I believe he's the most likable candidate out of the laundry list that moderate voters would go for.  If he does win the nomination going against Hillary Clinton, it will be a pretty interesting fight for 2016. 

No.  He won't run as a third party candidate.  Donald Trump is boisterous but not stupid.  Trump will of course talk to his people and realize that a third party run, although it would be fun and probably take up the boring hours of his day, would not be productive.  If third party candidates do have any role, it's getting their views heard by the most like-minded party.  We already know his positions on immigration and trade.  His views have already been heard, LOUDLY.  Doing the third party thing would be like calling the ex-girlfriend to remind her that it's over.

We understand, honey.  We'll do something about that immigration thing.

Also, wouldn't that third party situation be like Ross Perot stealing votes away from the true Republican nominee?  First of all, Ross Perot was NOT the reason why the Republicans lost back in 1992.  Bush was going up against Bill Clinton (THE BILL CLINTON), and the exit polls after the election showed that Clinton would have ROCKED Bush even if Perot wasn't in the race.  So we shouldn't do the dirty mistake of comparing these two cases (although they do have a lot in common) because the story doesn't help the Republicans' argument for Trump not to third-party it.

The Reality is that Trump has captured about 1/5 of the Republican vote.  That's 20%ish depending on which poll and week you look at.  Although he has the most votes, what we need to repeatedly remind ourselves is that this is not a majority of Republicans.  Some on the left would use his front-runner position to say how far off the deep end the Republican party has gone, but what I think is that Trump's bravado, balls, and name recognition have shocked Republicans enough to cut off a fifth of their pie to him.  It's respectable, and in a sense, well deserved. Will Trump's piece of the pie get bigger when other candidates drop out?  Probably, but it won't be a big enough slice gain for him to continue on once others start grabbing the other juicy pieces.

Trump is not going away soon like our 24-hour news cycle hopes he will.  However much we hate or like him, his candidacy will be a gradual decline going all the way into 2016.

Then again, I could just be another pundit, like the countless others fooled by the rise of The Donald, who only the future will put in his place.