With Hillary Clinton’s multiple misdeeds causing her political problems, both she and the Democratic Party have reason to be concerned. But both of them may yet be rescued by “The Donald,” who can turn out to be their Trump card.
Donald Trump has virtually no chance of becoming the Republican Party’s candidate in 2016, much less being elected president.
The reason is not hard to understand: Republican voters simply do not trust him, as the polls show.
Why then is he the “front-runner” in the polls?
One reason is arithmetic. When there is a small army of Republican candidates, each with a tiny set of supporters, anyone with enough name recognition to get the support of a fifth or a fourth of the Republicans polled stands out, even if twice that many Republicans say they would never vote for him.
When both kinds of Republicans are counted, Donald Trump is both the “front-runner” and the leading pariah. The danger is not that he will get the nomination, but that his irresponsible talk will become the image of the Republican Party, and that his bombast will drown out more sober voices that need to be heard.
More is involved than arithmetic. Many Republican voters are so disgusted with their party, especially over its repeated betrayals of them, and of the country, especially when it comes to immigration, that they are immediately attracted to anyone who voices the outrage they feel.
Donald Trump has turned this opening phase of the 2016 primaries into The Donald Trump Show. All of this might be very entertaining, if this were not a crucial juncture in the history of the country and of the world.
But, while all this political theater is going on, the world’s leading promoter of international terrorism — Iran — has gotten a “deal” that all but guarantees that they will have nuclear bombs and, not just incidentally, intercontinental missiles to deliver them.
Iran doesn’t need intercontinental missiles to reach Israel, which is closer to Iran than St. Louis is to Boston.
We can only hope that, somewhere among the many Republican candidates, there is someone who can, as president, make the hard decisions and take the hard steps required to undo the utter disaster that looms ahead, as a result of Barack Obama’s feckless foreign policies.
A shoot-from-the-hip, bombastic showoff is the last thing we need or can afford. As for the Democrats, their leading candidate — Hillary Clinton — was one of the architects of the foreign policy disasters that can turn into world-changing catastrophes.
My own view is that the last thing we need is another great talker with no track record of actually taking responsibility for running a government at any level. Among the Republican candidates are some governors whose records are worth scrutinizing. But the sooner the talkers are gone, the better. We can only hope that Donald Trump will be leading the procession of talkers headed for the exit. But don’t count on it.
Worse yet, 36 percent of Republicans polled recently say that they would vote for Trump if he ran as a third-party candidate. That would virtually guarantee victory for Hillary Clinton. “The Donald” could definitely be the Democrats’ Trump card.
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