It is February 2016 and the sky is falling on our heads. Donald Trump has just won the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. Those who predicted he would have long since imploded are scrambling to fallback positions. He will flame out on Super Tuesday, they insist. He will be ejected by primary voters in Jeb Bush’s Florida in March, they add.
If worst comes to worst, he will meet his Waterloo at the Republican convention in July — the first such brokered event in decades. Fear not, wise heads will reassure us, that man could never be president of the United States.
Like a stopped clock, conventional wisdom must eventually be right on Mr Trump. It goes without saying that sane people should hope so. Last week two of the billionaire’s more inflamed supporters beat up a homeless Hispanic man. All Trump could initially say was that his followers were “passionate”. Make no mistake, the property tycoon who would be president is an unpleasant piece of work.
Conservatives should be especially worried. His plans to round up and deport the estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants would require the federal power of a police state. His plan to scrap the 14th amendment’s birthright to US citizenship would corrode America’s soul.
Yet, he must be taken seriously. At first, the view was that Trump was merely the flavour of the month. People compared his sudden ascent to the 2012 Republican contest when a different outlier appeared to surge into the lead with each news cycle. One minute it was Michele Bachmann, the hardline Christian conservative from Minnesota. Next it was Herman Cain, the former pizza king with his zany “999” tax plan. Then it was Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. And so on. But it turned out all right in the end, as it always does. The establishment prevailed and Mitt Romney took the nomination.
Why should this time be any different? Because it already is. Trump has now consistently topped the polls for several weeks. When people are restless for a new flavour, they do not linger for so long on one. Nor can Trumpmania be attributed to people not paying attention. Quite the opposite: they are gripped.
The Republican debate this month had 24 million viewers — the highest ratings for a non-sporting event in US cable television history. It was also Fox News’s most watched programme ever. It took in almost four times as many viewers as the previous record for a Republican primary debate (6.7 million in late 2011). Doubtless many were tuning in with blood sport, rather than politics, in mind. Yet Mr Trump’s lead has solidified since then.
Political veterans say some event will occur to bring Trump’s meteor down to earth. It will have to be something special. Every time he makes a gaffe his numbers seem to improve. Whether he is making derogatory remarks about fellow Republicans, Hispanics, popular female television anchors, or women in general, that bird has flown. In spite of his three marriages and a tendency to talk about women as sex objects, he polls well with Christian conservatives. Trump’s popularity is based in part on his willing obnoxiousness. His brand subverts all laws of campaign propriety. It is hard to think of what he could say, or do, that would undermine that.
All of which is confusing. Washington pundits are a bit like those dazed cops in Basic Instinct watching Sharon Stone light up a cigarette. What are we going to do? Arrest him?
That brings us to the final line of defence — the brokered convention. With 17 candidates competing and none, other than Trump, having yet sustained a lead, the chances were already tilting towards one. Even without Trump, this is the most fractured and fractious Republican field in modern times. Let us suppose Trump wins a quarter of the delegates in the primaries and the remaining three-quarters are distributed between Jeb, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio — and perhaps Ted Cruz and John Kasich.
Add them all up and Trump could easily be ejected. But that supposes the rest have coalesced around one standard bearer. It is easy to imagine Rubio awarding his delegates to Jeb, or vice versa. But what about Cruz, the Tea Party-backed senator from Texas? The establishment can only prevail if it agrees.
Let us suppose it does and Jeb emerges from a bitter few days of horse-trading as the Republican nominee. What will Trump do then? Admit that the game is up after a fair fight? Or enter the field as a third-party candidate? My money would be on the latter. There would be all sorts of technical difficulties in putting his name on the ballot at that late stage. But cash goes a long way and Trump has plenty.
More to the point, he has ego. People debate Trump’s ideology. Some say he is nativist. Others say he is a moderate conservative with a nasty streak. The truth is he is making it up as he goes along. Trump has always been about Trump. If he made it to a brokered convention he would not stop there.
As regards predictions, I will risk one more. Trump will never be president of the US. Indeed, he is already halfway to ensuring that none of his Republican rivals will get there either.
— Financial Times
