Can we all now just admit and acknowledge that Donald Trump is in the Republican presidential race as a pretext for screwing the GOP and putting his good friend Hillary Clinton in the White House?
Although I, in turn, do have to admit that Trump's "brashness" and indiscretion, usually so grating and aggravating, is, in this instance, most useful in telegraphing that perfidious intention:
Donald Trump says the chances that he will launch a third-party White House run will “absolutely” increase if the Republican National Committee is unfair to him during the 2016 primary season.
Which begs the question of how broad Trump's definition of "unfairness" is.
“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” the business mogul told the Hill in a forty-minute interview from his Manhattan office at Trump Tower on Wednesday. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”
Two non sequiturs and, at best, an exaggeration in the space of two sentences. "I was their fair-haired boy" sounds like pure hyperbole combined with a plug for his, well, plugs. "Supportive" lines up right alongside "fairness". And when the GOP is being collectively embarrassed, not by Trump's ostensible policy stances, but by his boorish, low-rent, classless way of articulating them, I would say that Reince Priebus is justified in asking him to, not shut up, but raise his level of decorum to something approaching "presidential". Ditto the playground pissing match with John McCain last week, which buried the GOP with veterans and former POWs, that Trump ultimately had to pretend to walk back. Or Trump giving out Lindsey Graham's private cell phone number at a rally. Trust me, Tea Party Trumpsters, none of you exceeds my own contempt for McCain's Mini-Me, but pranking his cell phone? What's next, the proverbial flaming bag of dog crap on Graham's front step?
Trump is turning the 2016 presidential election, which I would think at least we all could agree is the most critical in American history if Obamunism is to be rolled back and the Old American Republic is to be resurrected, into reality television. Which probably helps explain why he's risen in the polls, but which is overwhelmingly depressing to those of us who still take politics seriously.
But I'm getting off-topic.
Pressed on whether he would run as a third-party candidate if he fails to clinch the GOP nomination, Trump said that “so many people want me to, if I don’t win.”
“I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans,” Trump said. “Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.”
This, a day after he insisted, "I will only ever run as a Republican.” To call this mercurial conduct is to be exceedingly charitable.
He's going third-party next year, folks. Pulling a Ross Perot. Shoving Hillary Clinton's fat ass into the Oval Office. Taking a, say, 54%-46% Scott Walker victory and turning it into a Rodham 46%, Walker 41%, Trump 13% defeat, based upon current poll numbers showing Trump luring away a quarter of the Republican vote. And he's doing so by playing on Tea Party rage and naivete like a Stradivarius, which has the added advantage (from his point of view) of guaranteeing that he won't draw votes away from Mrs. Clinton as well.
And when I say "Tea Party naivete," I'm serious as a heart attack. It's as I've observed many times: Tea Partiers appear far more interested in venting from the outside than they ever are actually winning elections and getting into positions of power from which to actually put the policies we all want into place. They're flocking to Trump's tacky banner because he's blasting the people they can't stand: primarily, Republicans. But in the process, it's as if TPers have lost sight of the fact that not everybody in the GOP presidential field is of the hated "establishment". Does that label fit Ted Cruz? Rand Paul? Rick Perry? Bobby Jindal? Or, most pointedly, Scott Walker? They're all the antithesis of RINOs, and Scott Walker has a track record of executive experience and precisely the sort of bare-knuckle governing pugilism TPers claim to want, while at the same time maintaining a level of statesman-like decorum that has enabled him to win three Statewide elections in four years in a powder-"blue" State. Pardon my Trumpesque bluntness, but what has The Donald ever won or accomplished for the constitutionalist cause? Unless you're counting throwing a flaming bag of dog crap on Lindsey Graham's front step.
And I'm not the only one to make this observation:
It’s true that some frustrated GOP voters have sympathy for a party schism, but in the past those impulses have coalesced around figures like Sarah Palin, who had a lifetime of solid conservative credentials — not someone who was backing Democrats until seven years ago, pushing Canadian-style health care reform, and demurring on action regarding late-term abortions.
And, let us not forget, backing "comprehensive immigration reform" as recently as three years ago.
At some point, Tea Party Trumpsters are going to have to make a choice. If they shove Trump on the GOP as its presidential nominee - which I still find inconceivable - he will lose in a landslide to Hillary Clinton. If Trump fades over the next few months and his Tea Party bitterenders vow to back his Ross Perot act out of suicidal spite, they and he will narrowly put Hillary Clinton over the top. Either way, a Trump ascension means a Hillary victory. Is that really what y'all want? Or is venting rage at the "establishment" truly all you care about?
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