Go Donald, Go! (FKA "Where’s the Donald?")

UPDATE XII:  "Whatever you think of Donald Trump, he’s now the hub around which the race revolves, and that only makes the rest of the candidates’ problem more acute. It’s hard enough to get noticed when you have 15 competitors, but when one of them soaks up so media attention, it becomes even harder. All that pushes candidates — at the debates, and elsewhere — to do something, anything, to get some notice. . .

The [upcoming GOP] debate could play out in a number of ways: candidates could attack Trump, or a few might go after Jeb Bush, hoping to become the alternative to the closest thing the race has to a non-Trump frontrunner, or something else entirely might occur. But if all of them are looking for someone to strike at, it could end up being a demolition derby — fun to watch, but not exactly the thing to inspire faith in the participants."

Read the Washington Post, The Republican demolition derby.

UPDATE XI:  "Republicans dreaming of shooing away Donald Trump may want to think twice.

By publicly rebuking the billionaire businessman for his inflammatory comments, the party may convince Trump to launch a third-party candidacy."

Read CNN,  GOP's nightmare: An Independent Donald Trump. 

Read also Vote Republi-CON, the Party of Fear, Anger, and Hatred in 2016!

But if The Donald runs as an independent, I just might cast my angry Republi-con vote for him. (Yes, I am a registered Republican.) 

UPDATE X:  For a great analogy and to better understand the Republi-con's dilemma with Trump, the Preschooler, read the Washington Post, You cannot fight Donald Trump with conventional weapons, which states in good part:

"If you attended preschool at any point in your life, you understand the problem with Donald Trump’s candidacy. You remember the one kid on the playground who makes everyone else’s recess hell.

'You’re out,' you say. 'You just got tagged.'

'No, I’m not,' he says. 'Nobody can touch me ’cause I’m made of fire.'

'No, you’re not,' you say. 'That’s not how the rules work.'

'Yes,' he says, 'Yes it is I made the rule that I’m fire and if I touch you you burn up and nothing you can do can undo it ’cause fire beats everything.'

'That’s not fair,' you say.

'And I touched you and now you’re out,' he says, and shortly afterwards the game ends in him winning, because that is the only way he will allow it to end.

Certain five-year-olds are impervious to rules. They won’t play nicely. They trample through your sandcastles. They arrogate sudden inexplicable powers to themselves which render them invincible and can therefore defeat you at a touch, or they announce that they can cross into your territory by special dispensation, or they simply refuse to stay tagged when you tag them.

'This won’t work if he doesn’t freeze when he’s tagged!' you complain, but — what authority do you have? The rules of games possess only as much authority as you allow them. There are no referees handing out red cards for Red Rover. You are in a state of nature unless the other kindergartners agree otherwise.

And this can be extremely frustrating when you are accustomed to playing by the rules. There you are, with Ted and Bobby and Carly, playing nicely, and then along comes Donald and announces that you aren’t playing Traditional GOP Primary Where Everyone Can Be Handicapped By Gaffes but instead King Donald’s Primary where everything everyone says has consequences except for what Donald says because Donald is made of fire.

He is the terror of the schoolyard for a reason. 'Can we play it my way?' you ask. No. You can’t. His way or no way at all. And now he’s got your favorite truck.

You can’t win against someone who refuses to admit that there are rules. Not only that, but you can’t declare him 'out.' If he wants to play with you, you’re stuck.

And this is the problem we’re running into now with Donald Trump. . .

We, as a public and as a media, are used to an election game that has, if not certain rules, certain — accepted formulas and traditions. It is supposed to be a kind of low-rent reality TV for people who couldn’t make it on real reality TV — proportionally more serious and less entertaining. If it is the GOP primary, the more it looks like Twelve Angry Men, the better. But the rules only exist by our mutual and silent agreement. So does the game itself, for that matter."

Read also Vote Republi-CON, the Party of Fear, Anger, and Hatred in 2016! 

UPDATE IX:  "How did America get to such a place that someone like Donald Trump can command a lead in the Republican primaries? Trump is the product of a deliberate Republican strategy, adopted by Richard Nixon’s people in 1968, to attract voters with an apocalyptic redemption story rather than reasoned argument.  It has taken almost 50 years, but we have finally arrived at the culmination of postmodern politics in which Republican leaders use words to create their own reality."

Read Salon, How did this monster get created? The decades of GOP lies that brought us Donald Trump, Republican front-runner.

UPDATE VIII:  Cruz will visit the Donald's "Manhattan throne to kiss his ring."

Read Slate, What a Trump-Cruz Alliance Could Mean for the GOP Race.

Here's hopin for a Cruz-Trump ticket in 2016 ;-). 

UPDATE VII:  "Trump has merely held up a mirror to the GOP. The man, long experience has shown, believes in nothing other than himself. He has, conveniently, selected the precise basket of issues that Republicans want to hear about — or at least a significant proportion of Republican primary voters. He may be saying things more colorfully than others when he talks about Mexico sending rapists across the border, but his views show that, far from being an outlier, he is hitting all the erogenous zones of the GOP electorate."

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump is the monster the GOP created. 

UPDATE VI:  "There’s no world in which Donald Trump is a serious candidate for president. Republican elites don’t want him, Republican donors don’t want him, and if—through some cosmic fluke—he managed to win a major primary, every strategist and activist in the Republican Party would turn their aim toward him and his candidacy.

But just because Trump is an unqualified vanity candidate doesn’t mean he’s unimportant in the story of the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Unlike Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee—two vastly more legitimate candidates—Trump is popular with Republican voters. A new CNN national poll puts him in second place in the GOP field at 12 percent support—seven points behind the leader, Jeb Bush—while recent polls from Iowa and New Hampshire also show him with a second place spot in those crucial early contests. If Trump holds his position, he’ll be on stage with Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio when official debates start in August (he could even lose some support and still make the cut).

The obvious question is “Why?”—why does Trump have a hold on this thick slice of the members of the Republican base? The answer is, unlike the professional politicians in the race, Trump is—from his views on immigration to the “issue” of Obama's citizenship—one of them."

Read Slate, The GOP Base Loves Trump.  

UPDATE V:  "He has virtually zero chance of winning the presidential nomination. But insiders worry that the loud-mouthed mogul is more than just a minor comedic nuisance on cable news; they fret that he’s a loose cannon whose rants about Mexicans and scorched-earth attacks on his rivals will damage the eventual nominee and hurt a party struggling to connect with women and minorities and desperate to win."

Read Politico, Donald Trump bump terrifies GOP. 

UPDATE IV:  Let the show begin.

Read the Daily Mail, Donald Trump accused of hiring ACTORS for $50 each to pose as supporters at Trump Towers presidential campaign launch.  

UPDATE III:  "Everyone thinks Donald Trump's candidacy will be a disaster for the Republican Party. But here are three ways his presence could actually help the GOP."

Read the Washington Post, Why Donald Trump will be good for the Republicans in 2016.

UPDATE II:  The Donald "can’t seem to stop himself. Trump’s announcement (from Trump Tower, ’natch) that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination was a veritable festival of the first person. A search of the transcript finds that he uttered “I” 195 times, “my” or “mine” 28 times, “me” 22 times and “I’ve or “I’d” 12 times — for a grand total of 257 self-references."

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s festival of narcissism.

Read also the Washington Post, The Trump clown show, which notes that "America has its share (maybe a larger share) of hucksters, con men, pranksters and the like who seek to grab their 15 minutes of fame. We should not be surprised when they show up in presidential races. And while Trump is a ludicrous figure with no chance to win, there are lots of other candidates who have an equally low chance (zero) to make it to the nomination. Still, it is worse having Trump there, since he obviously is using this opportunity purely as self-promotion and to air his obnoxious attitudes."

UPDATE:  "The world's most big-headed businessman is about to enter the 2016 election, and the GOP is in trouble".

Read Salon,  Donald Trump is about to prove what a joke the Republican Primary is. 

"[I]f I were a Republican presidential candidate, I would do everything in my power to get Trump taken seriously. Oh, I know in previous years he has hinted at a presidential run and then done nothing. But the man provides a utility that the party dearly needs: He makes the other candidates seem reasonable. . .

Trump’s most interesting quirk is his touching conviction that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. You may wonder about the religious fervor of some of the candidates — the ever-running Rick Santorum, for instance — or the suppressed isolationism of Rand Paul. But nothing approaches Trump’s birther belief.

It remains remotely possible that Trump fastened on the birther stuff just to get some attention. After all, he is in other respects both smart and canny. He has built an impressive real estate empire and presided over a long-lasting and evidently successful TV show. He is a billionaire, and his brand is either an icon or a narcotic: People flock to his buildings, positioning themselves so the name Trump can be seen in their selfies.

It’s possible that even in American politics one can go too far. Maybe Trump has soiled himself. Now, it is true that Obama’s birth certificate was a bit late in showing up, but why demand it and not, at the same time, John McCain’s? Could it have been Obama’s race? Or that his father was born in Kenya? Or that his middle name is Hussein? Could it, in short, be a reflection of prejudice? I mean, black man, white mother, Kenyan father, strange middle name .?.?. can’t you connect the dots? Trump can. Follow them long enough and you’re in the loony bin.

Trump’s birther obsession is both distasteful and more than a minor tic, like his flamboyant hairdo. When, for instance, Hawaii’s health director, Loretta Fuddy, died in the crash of a small plane, Trump tweeted: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.” Was he implying that Obama somehow killed her — maybe by drone? Who knows? Kenyans are capable of anything.

American politics sometimes seems to me to be a version of the movie “Animal House.” Every four years, some wholly unqualified person surfaces — usually in the Republican Party — and is swiftly declared some sort of political messiah. Last time around it was the ridiculous Herman Cain, pedigreed by right-wing pundits as the man we’ve all been waiting for, and before that the comedic Sarah Palin, a woman for whom the word unqualified is itself unqualified. This year, it could be almost anyone, but whoever it is, he or she (Carly Fiorina?) better pray that Donald Trump gets fully into the race. He’ll make everyone else look better."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP needs Donald Trump.