TRUMP COMES UP TRUMPS

The American Political scene has finally reached reductio  absurdum with the emergence of Donald Trump as the leading nominee for the GOP Presidency nomination. Jay H. Ell states leading advisedly as there is a long long way to go before the election - nearly eighteen months - and if history is anything to go by The Donald will have disappeared off the scene by then. But The Donald is more about making history than mirroring it and Jay H. Ell believes this time he is in it for the long run. He is already threatened a third party run if necessary. The very fact that he is currently center of the Republican thrust is reflective of the dysfunction of the American political process and the Republican Party’s failure to define itself. 

NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS ESPECIALLY REALITY TV

Jay H. Ell has blogged again and again that the media circus dictates the race. (“Governor Walker - The Tea Party’s and Media’s White Hope”, “The 2016  GOP Presidential Horse Race”, “The 2016 POTUS Race - Its Hillarious” and “The GOP Leadership Race and My Fair Hillary”). The media have every incentive to keep the race close and or interesting in order to keep up their ratings over the two year period leading up to the election. The chief dramatis personae - the Presidential candidates - are available at no cost and come with their own scripts. The candidates even subsidize their own appearances by paying astronomical sums for advertisements. So the media moguls have the bonanza of getting free programming material, a free cast and the participants paying to be in the show.

 However in order to make the Primary races “competitive”, for example, Bernie Sanders a well meaning populist, who initially had about 1 per cent of the electorate support, gets unbelievable coverage for his views. Hillary's woes are front page news to the extent that if she could dig herself a hole till election time she would. Such is the burden of being the odds on favorite in the light of the media's need to make this a competitive horse race. 

Now nobody understands the media like Trump. He is the very epitome of the belief that there is no such concept as bad publicity - all publicity is good publicity. While the media berates the fact that he is receiving so much attention they add to the food fest by providing more coverage pretending how painful it is. It is in this reality show environment that a real reality show star, the unashamedly megalomaniacal Donald Trump, takes center stage. Now this is more than just acting where many American politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger have excelled. This is about projecting real life situations onto the world stage and acting them out to massive audiences - reality TV. Trump has already excelled in this being the star in “The Apprentice” where he behaves as in real life, firing people left right and center and being as boorish as he is in his day to day interactions, treading all over the sensibilities of all. Winning is what he is all about as he proudly displays his daily antisocial behaviors before a gawking public. 

TRUMP DOES IT “MY WAY”

So Trump is a winner. Unlike any other presidential candidate he boasts about the billions he has made. He has done it all by himself by flaunting convention and giving meaning to the American dream. He is not looking for donations he is paying for his own campaign. He has stated he will spend as much as is necessary if he stays up there in the polls. Anyway he is receiving billions in free publicity. Currently he is sucking up all the political oxygen. Every

day its another story - McCain is a coward, Jeb Bush has no energy, Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number is announced to the world, Perry’s attack on him and his response labelling the former Texas Governor “unintelligent”, Ted Cruz’s endorsement, Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee’s Chairman’s hour long telephone call to him telling him to cool it, “Trump heads the polls”, Rupert Murdoch disowns Trump while his Fox news supports him, Trump hits out at Obama’s foreign policy….

Trump is not stomping at the Iowa bake sales and exchanging pleasantries with the locals. He is not tramping down the trendy New Hampshire streets buying souvenirs rather he is occupying the national stage with a vengeance. He has name recognition, he doesn’t need anyone’s patronage and most of all he knows how the media works and plays them like a fiddle. He has  the highest paid political advisor but no political infrastructure to speak off. 

The media that is his lifeblood is attacked by him with the populist refrain that nobody trusts them. He picks fights with those he perceives are against him and is sycophantic to those that agree with him. Convention is thrown out of the window. He is defining his race and he is the policy and all that “Trumpism” represents. His campaign is out of the box - not subtly like Obama’s was by winning Primary delegates in non Democratic states - but by revolutionizing the way campaigns are run.

TRUMP AND THE GOP

The Republican establishment by angering him and cutting him loose have ironically made it harder for him to retreat even if he wants too. He has maintained that he has been badly treated by them. He was their fair haired boy when he was dishing out donations now they are trying to sideline him. If the GOP treat him fairly he may not consider a run as a third party candidate if he does not get the GOP nomination. It is not only the establishment that will shun Trump. The Koch Brothers, for example, are not going to spend a billion on someone’s agenda they can’t control. Walker is their man.

Everyone knows he had a dressing down from the establishment. He wears it as badge of honor. Michael Steele, the former GOP National Chairman, said Trump has redefined what angina means at the Head Office. The hierarchy must have run out of antacids he added, visibly relieved that this wasn’t his problem.

Jay H. Ell believes that Trump is in the process of finally overseeing the dissolution of the two headed GOP. He resonates with the Tea Party and has no stake in keeping the two wings together. He has no time for the Bushs. Trump may be an elitist but he is a self made. He was not born on third base. There is little doubt that he, unlike all the other Conservative Presidential wannabes from now and before, can emerge as the unified right wing candidate. This makes him a real threat against Jeb Bush. The latter cannot just hang around like Romney did as the mediocrities on the right drop out one by one. Trump is emerging early as the front runner gaining support each day. He is what the Tea Party revolution is all about.

If Bush emerges as front runner Trump will immediately believe that the Party Organization did it and fancy his chances as a third Party candidate. That decision will give the second Clinton a shoo in as much as Ross Perot did for her husband. The establishment better be working long and hard to give Trump an honorable exit as soon as possible. It was the height of arrogance to take him on in that fashion.

TRUMP’S POLITICS 

So here he is playing out this role in real TV telling the electorate what scum of the earth the Mexican illegal immigrants are while in the next breath saying that some of his best employees are Mexicans. He has a populist message - low taxation, no welfare and America uber alles, for example. At the moment he is focussing on immigration and will continue to do so while it resonates. He is off to the Texas border, replete with a baseball cap blaring,”Make America Great Again”, where he attracts massive crowds with the accompanying media coverage. If Trump continues he is sure to gear his populist message to the issue du jour as he has no need to spell out a comprehensive manifesto. He boasts that he will win the Hispanic vote….his position has been misrepresented……

True to form Trump confronted CNN’s Anderson Cooper with the bluster that he was going to make the dead American dream bigger, better and stronger. He continued, “I do it with great bravado and the audience goes crazy”.

NO JOKE

For those who think that this whole exercise is a joke they better think again. This is not a neophyte like Herman Cain. Trump, for better or worse, is an American icon. He is used to success and strides his world like a colossus. The longer this goes on the more his ego is at stake and this is all about his ego. The influential Huffington Post have put Mr. Trump on the entertainment page with the well known reality show, the Kardashians, as they think that is what he is all about. They miss the point that Jay H. Ell has been making again and again - the media have turned politics into entertainment long ago. The point that it is all about entertainment is not lost on The Donald and there is no-one better in this milieu.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Realistically Trump cannot win the Presidency as he has irreversibly antagonized the growing Hispanic vote. Also his message does not carry beyond the Republican base. His tactic would be if he ever got in a position to challenge would be to smear the opposition to kingdom come and say the electorate needs to dump politics as usual and give him, a Washington outsider and a highly successful entrepreneur and manager, a chance. He has also reassured that he can be dignified if need be!

 However, one thing is for sure he has to have cheered up the Democratic National Party Headquarters as much he has depressed the Republican one. The GOP establishment has to be cringing at the thought of how destructive the GOP Primary debates are shaping up to be.They are almost certain to be a rerun of the last two electoral cycles' disasters. As Jay H. Ell has argued the longer this goes on the more “The Donald” has personally at stake. If he really does become the challenger he might just have to come to terms, publicly, with a massive defeat - something that is not on his radar and a circumstance for which he has never rehearsed.

But then again Trump has never been embarrassed or wrong. When challenged about his donations to the Democrats he maintained that was “business”. After years’ long campaign that Obama had not been born in America he maintained that his investigators had uncovered evidence to that effect. He was then confronted with Obama’s “long” birth certificate. At a press conference that he was going to make his major revelation on the birther issue, without flinching, he bombastically proclaimed that he had done the country a favor by forcing Obama to reveal proof of his American birth - apparently his investigators had found nothing! Jay H. Ell knows of a few other entities he could do a favor by calling it quits. 

No one knows how this will all end least of all The Donald. Jay H. Ell warns him if he indeed becomes a serious contender he will not know what hit him as the barrage of interest groups backing other candidates ascend on him and reveal each detail of his lugubrious career.  Whatever the outcome he will still declare victory. 

All in all scary stuff.