Most of the politically savvy people I know are still confident that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee for president.
Some are even dismissive...
Giuliani, Dean, and all the other outsiders who failed to close the deal were constrained by those rules and standards of politics I referred to earlier... They couldn’t flip-flop — often mid-sentence — the way Trump can with carefree abandon. If they hurled childish insults at opponents and critics, it would have cost them dearly.
Meanwhile, Trump keeps on a’Trumping, flouting those constraints. His unfavorable numbers have actually come down in the process. It’s a cliché to say he’s defying the laws of political gravity, but it’s true. He respects only the laws of entertainment gravity.
And those laws may ultimately prove his undoing. Eventually, his shtick could get old, even for his fans. There are signs that this is happening. But there are also signs that he’s improving as a candidate. His interviews are getting sharper and less manic. Earlier this month, reporters kept asking Trump what it would take for him to drop out of the race. It seems to me what they were really asking was, “When will things get back to normal?”
The hard truth: They just might not get back to normal.
Whether or not he gets the nomination, Trump should be seen as a wake-up call. His entirely cynical exploitation of immigration — Trump criticized Mitt Romney in 2012 for being too harsh on immigration — tapped into an entirely sincere dissatisfaction with the status quo. His brilliant leveraging of his celebrity for political gain reveals much about the calcified state of American politics. Trump may fade away, but the forces driving Trumpism are more enduring and must be taken seriously.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
