Here is one thing that we can all agree on at least for now and that is Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States. Yes, he announced Tuesday his official bid for the White House and in so doing became the 11th Republican candidate running for the party’s nomination.
For many candidates being involved in the early debates are very important and Fox News has said it will determine which members of the Republican field will make the top-tier debate cutoff by evaluating the last five national polls ahead of the main event. CNN is following a similar plan for their first debate; candidates who aren’t polling as well as others will participate only in a bottom-tier contest.
This is where Trump has an advantage by name alone he is likely to make the cutoff and thus be part of the debates. So far he has made the top 10 late last month in a couple polls and now that he in the field there are people who want to see him in the debates.
Cable news loves the idea of Trump in the race Trump because he gives some of the best sound bites in all of news. He’s unabashedly confident, speaks with what’s at most a very thin filter, and has very little to lose.
Matt Latimer of Politico penned a great feature story that is a must read entitled “ Seven Reasons the GOP Should Fear Donald Trump.” Of the seven very interesting and valid reason’s here are the three to me that are the most compelling.
Expectations -He’s a nuisance, a hothead, totally unqualified, a spoiler. But enough about Pat Buchanan, whose surprisingly strong, populist, “mad as hell” primary campaign against George H. W. Bush in 1992 left the Bush faction reeling all the way to their defeat in the general election. That nobody thinks Donald Trump has any hope of winning a primary, much less a single debate, makes it all the easier for him to surprise reporters simply by doing better than expected. If Donald Trump can manage a clever quip or two in the first debate, poke fun at himself, and not set his lectern, or the moderator daring to question him, on fire, he’ll impress the hell out of nearly everyone.
Voters Like Crazy – Speaking of Ross Perot, this was a man who once claimed Cuban assassins had been sent to kill him. A man who dropped out of the presidential race, before dropping back in, because of an alleged Republican “plot” he uncovered to disrupt his daughter’s wedding. He picked as his running mate a totally unprepared candidate who at one point in the vice presidential debate confessed that his hearing aid wasn’t working. His campaign theme song was–and this is no joke–Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” And yet H. Ross Perot was at one point the frontrunner for the presidency and still, after finding himself immersed in plotlines that would be rejected as too far-fetched for “American Horror Story,” managed 19 percent of the popular vote. In other words, one out of five Americans thought he wasn’t too crazy to be president.
The Incredible Hulk Syndrome -As much as his fellow GOPers would love to mock and torment Trump, the smarter among them will work hard to restrain themselves. For one simple reasons: much like Bruce Banner, you don’t want to make an unpredictable billionaire angry. A third-party bid, railing against the GOP, could very well destroy whatever plausible chance the party has to defeat Hillary Clinton (who Trump has said he likes “very much.”)
I tend to agree that the last one where Trump might run as a third party candidate is a remote possibility but stranger things have happened. One thing is for sure and that is he will make the race a great deal more fun to cover.