We all know Donald Trump is an accomplished businessman, and with that comes the acumen of how to play the game. Now what would you do if you were engaged in a business deal and you found out the other parties were colluding against you?
Many national Republican officials are increasingly resigned to Mr. Trump’s looming presence. At a meeting of the Republican Governors Association this week in Aspen, Colo., donors and operatives mused about how to prevent him from hijacking the debate.
One idea that came up was to urge three leading candidates — Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor; Mr. Walker; and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — to band together and state that they would not participate in any debate in which Mr. Trump was present, using his refusal to rule out a third-party bid as a pretext for taking such a hard line. The thinking, according to a Republican involved in the conversations, was that the lesser-funded prospects who have been eclipsed by Mr. Trump would follow suit, and the TV networks airing the debates would be forced to bar Mr. Trump in order to have a full complement of candidates.
— New York Times, 7/22/15
Tell ya what: if I was in the midst of a deal and I knew the people I was negotiating with were secretly trying to stab me in the back, I’d threaten to blow shit up. Beware of the media verbiage being issued of the party not “being nice to him”. It’s really about the establishment GOP, in their “wisdom”, long ago deciding that a Jeb Bush-type would be our best chance at a 2016 presidential victory.
Unfortunately, not everyone’s buying it.
Jeb Bush stumbled through a familiar question about his brother and father, struggling for the right words as he cracked a joke about duking it out with anyone who questioned the legacy of his aging dad.
After weeks of preparing for a smash-mouth debate with Donald J. Trump, 14 Republican candidates found themselves instead Trump-less but sandwiched into a constricting format on Monday night, delivering strikingly uneven performances just days before the first big test of the presidential primary contest.
Rather than making the other contenders look more presidential, however, the event, at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., seemed to shrink the candidates. Assembled in the front row, the Republicans gawked as each rival took his or her turn on stage, looking at times as if they were being forced to sit through a tedious school assembly.
— New York Times, 8/4/15
While some are good people, imagine the sinking feeling many of us would have, watching yet another bunch of Republican stiffs reciting focus group-tested responses and mini-speeches that would give you that dreaded here-we-go-again feeling. Despite the concern of the aforementioned “donors and operatives”, hijacking the debate might have been a good thing.
In what could be yet another brilliant display of business savvy, by Trump sitting out this event, he gave the Republican base a clear illustration of what we’d have to deal with if he wasn’t in the race and that illustration is downright depressing. Meanwhile, the Trump train is mowing down the competition….
Trump Leads Nationally, and In IA, NH, SC, FL
We all know the choices forced upon us by the Republican Party have not always resulted in victories and the ramifications on the rest of us are real. Those in the elite, GOP donor-operative class can afford to weather the results of poor electoral decisions. The rest of us can’t.
If the party apparatus decides to go against the voters (again), Mr. Trump should do what he has to do if the GOP is too thick-headed and arrogant to take yet another hint.
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