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Ego, Arrogance, and Contempt

Donald Trump is all ego, arrogance, and contempt.  And orange lint-ball hair.  He will never be President.  He will quite likely drop out of the primary contest when he has satisfied the trinity of traits that drive him to pretend that he is serious about running.

We need not, for a moment, worry that he will win the Presidency, or even the Republican nomination.  It is the Republican Party that ought to worry.  Donald Trump is saying out loud what the Republican Party needs to worry about:  racism, Know-Nothing politics, contempt for ordinary people, "Let them eat cake!" attitude toward the poor,  blowhard contempt for other nations and cultures, and such an astonishing ego that one does not know whether to kneel and bow, or to laugh until you wet your pants.

Poll-takers report that 15 or 20 or 160 percent of all prospective Republican voters support Trump.  Let us plainly admit that those polls have very little to do with whether Trump will actually be nominated by the Republican Party, any more than the same kind of early polls suggested that . . . oh . . . Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum would win.  What the polling numbers do indicate is that over on the right wing of the right wing Republican Party, there is an ugly strain of racist, anti-immigrant, hyper-male opinion, and Donald Trump provides an opportunity to hear and cheer for it.

The danger for Republicans, immediately, is two-fold.  If Trump stays in the race long enough, the general public will justifiably identify his despicable opinions with the Grand Old Party itself, and that would cost them dearly in the general election.  In the second place, if the Party "regulars" push Trump aside, and if his ego and contempt is large enough, Trump could stage a third party movement, and take those rabid supporters with him, something as Ross Perot did, and that will torpedo the Republicans, too.   If there is a caveat, it is that Ross Perot really did want to be President, and had ground-level organization.  Trump does not.  Yet.  If ever.

And who knows what either of those scenarios might lead to?  The demise of the current Republican Party?  The need for a new, responsible conservative party, without the racism, sexism, anti-immigrant rhetoric?   If the current Republican Party tries to purge itself of those ultra-right-wing Know-Nothings, what is left of it might not be substantial enough to matter.  It might simply force the formation of a new "Southern-strategy" party.  Who thinks that would be best?  The Civil War has to end some day.

If there is any way in which Donald Trump's ego-bloated campaign might result in something good for either the Republican Party or the nation, I will have to reassess my conviction that there is not a Grand Machiavellian Manipulator playing with history.

Trump is a disgrace.  He represents what is worst about us.  

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