The Flat-Footed Interloper Pirouettes
"No one has figured out how to handle Trump. Everyone underestimated him terribly from day one. But as someone who knows him and knew his father -- the whole family -- I can assure you, that was a mistake."
Tom Kean, former New Jersey governor
"If other campaigns wish that we're going to uncork money on Donald Trump [to launch a tough assault], they'll be disappointed."
"Trump is, frankly, other people's problem We'd be happy to have a two-way race with Trump in the end, and we have every confidence that governor Bush would beat him."
Mike Murphy, chief strategist, Right to Rise PAC
"Right now, we are solely focused on supporting governor Perry in the early states."
"We'll cross that bridge [spending millions to fight Trump] when we get there."
Austin Barbour, super PAC's senior adviser
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| Donald Trump gives a speech at Trump Tower on June 16. Photo: Getty Images |
The surprise contender for the Republican nomination in an election campaign that won't rise over the horizon for well over a year and a half has everyone running for cover. The man whom his bizarre outspoken roughneck persona made a figure of admiration or derision on television is now prepared through his billions to personally buy the presidency of the United States as a vanity project while sending the real candidates into panic mode.
Not because he has something to offer that they don't have, not that he has the intellectual and political resource-sway to present as a worthwhile candidate, but because his 'common-man's' touch -- with the emphasis on 'common' -- has connected with the public, and as a result polls indicate he's well out in front as a popular choice of the man and woman on Street USA. Which is rather a shocking, not to speak of revolting development.
Legitimate candidates don't quite know how to handle this turn of events that is viewed with a measure of disbelief throughout the international community. Not that immense sums of cash haven't in the near past more or less helped to buy the presidency. But even when former government of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney -- a wealthy man who was an excellent governor as a Republican in a massively Democratic state -- was the Republican choice to run against President Obama's second term, his wealth wasn't even a side issue.
Romney was an experienced politician and a successful one. An intelligently capable and well-spoken candidate (but for a few gaffes), he was a credible alternative to the president. But incumbents have rarely been voted out of office their second time around, and President Obama hadn't, by the end of his first term, completely turned voters off; the residue of the goodwill and trust that had swept him to power in 2008 was enough to win him a second term.
Now, Mitt Romney watches as his party has been roiled by the incursion of a man notorious for brash pronouncements and cloddish behaviour, making a mockery of the aspirations of candidates who have worked hard to attain the kind of acclaim that an egotistical oaf is the beneficiary of. Leaving those candidates in a quandary of trying to decide their best course of action. Avoid and ignore the crude interloper?
Or point out that his personal style is just that, and style worn by this singular person has nothing whatever to do with the executive administration of a great country, beyond the ambition of a man whose wealth propels him to seek power and in the process the distinction of having breached the bastion of political heights through pretension and absurd manipulation that has somehow resonated with the great unwashed.
Former Texas governor Rick Perry had unleashed his personal scorn on the hairstyle-who-would-be-king by pointing out his lack of conservative credentials naming him "a cancer on conservatism". For his efforts he fell further down the polls. A number of voters at a recent focus group stated their view of Trump as an entertainment figure, not a Republican party representative, but these appear to be a minority view.
Good luck America, you'll need it!
Labels: Controversy, Election, Presidency, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 24, 2015
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