Third- party wrecking ball
The odds of Donald Trump running as a third- party candidate grow with each passing week. And the odds of the Republican Party retaking the White House go down accordingly.
Trump isn’t going to fold up his tent before Nov. 9, 2016. To understand why, it is important to understand the symbiotic relationship between Trump’s ego, media coverage of him, and the source of his appeal.
Trump’s ego will drive him into third- party status because it won’t allow him to publicly accept defeat. He won’t simply drop out of the GOP race and graciously support the party nominee if he fails to win enough delegates in enough primaries like the other failed candidates can be expected to do; rather, he will seek to continue his magical ego trip all the way to Election Day itself.
The only way he can do this is outside of a Republican Party that will inevitably choose someone else as their nominee.
Trump isn’t a conventional candidate, and he won’t play by conventional rules. He wouldn’t be Trump if he did. And in a self- financed campaign, he can continue the ride as long as he wants.
But what egomaniacs require is ego- gratification, and what that requires, in turn, is attention, which is precisely what Trump is receiving from saturation media coverage. Trump might be getting only 25 percent or so in polls that are of dubious value, but he’s probably getting 75 percent or more of the media coverage on the Republican side.
Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and the rest of what would otherwise be a formidable GOP field can put forth all kinds of interesting ideas and policy proposals but the only way they can attract attention is by responding to something the Donald has done. They are newsworthy only as a reaction to him.
Part of this is likely driven by ideological antipathy; more specifically, a gleeful desire on the part of a left- leaning media to make Republicans look as bad as possible, with Trump as useful instrument of the moment. But it also reflects the way in which, in an increasingly dumbed- down society with a reduced attention span, political campaigns have become just another form of the grotesque reality TV out of which Trump crawled.
As politics becomes entertainment for a growing legion of low information voters, our entertainers become politicians. And no one can say that Trump isn’t entertaining.
The final prong in the Trump phenomenon, however, and the one upon which everything else depends is the source of his political support. Along these lines, it has been amusing to see otherwise astute political analysts confidently predict Trump’s demise after his latest gaffe or absurdity. Each one is supposed to be the one that “does it,” the one that sinks him for good. But it doesn’t happen, and isn’t going to. Like some monster in a horror movie that can’t be killed no matter how many times you shoot or stab it, Trump just keeps getting back up, stronger than ever, steamrolling on with no apologies or regrets or remorse.
Self- inflicted wounds that would mean the death of any other candidacy only seem to provoke more support. And the pundits are left to shake their heads in befuddlement and wonder.
Such incomprehension alerts us to the risk of applying conventional wisdom to the unconventional. Trump isn’t running the same way as the other candidates because he isn’t running for the same reasons, and he won’t be done in by what would fell them either.
Those seeking to grasp the essence of Trump invariably miss the point— his goal is to outrage, insult, and provoke, at every step along the way, with today’s offense replacing yesterday’s in the news cycle, to then be replaced by tomorrow’s. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying about him, only that it’s him they’re saying it about.
Trump’s “gaffes” aren’t gaffes at all, but deliberate reinforcements of his appeal. Because his primary selling point is attitude, the idea that he is authentic in an age of inauthenticity, and will say and do whatever he pleases, consequences be damned and regardless of who gets offended.
He is purposely an agent of confident offense in an era of politically correct posturing, issue ducking and timid defensiveness.
This is what a certain portion of the electorate that is angry, frustrated and generally fed up wants, and Trump is giving it to them raw. This is why they won’t desert him no matter how absurd or morally repugnant his behavior becomes. To the contrary, the more outrageously he acts, and the more he is attacked by all the usual suspects for it, the more their loyalty is cemented.
And Trump knows they will follow wherever he goes, including into a third- party bid.
Trump leads in the polls at this point only because the GOP field is so fragmented. He won’t be the nominee because, once that field begins to winnow itself out, and Republican rank- and- file voters become more familiar with those that remain, he will lose head- to- head matchups in the primaries to the likes of John Kasich or Marco Rubio.
Or is that simply more of the conventional wisdom that Trump keeps proving wrong?