Republicans are now facing a big numbers problem. There are too many people running for the party’s presidential nomination and that is complicating its efforts to cobble together a majority in the 2016 national elections.

How many is too many? No hard and fast rule exists, of course. But 14 Republicans have thrown their hats in the ring and three are poised to do so, which adds up to 17 — and if two is company and three’s a crowd, I count 5.67 crowds.

Decorum is elusive in such circumstances. With so many Republican horses now neighing in the same political paddock, media attention almost inevitably focuses on the wildest of the bunch, dragging down the overall level of discourse in the process.

The bronco doing most of the bucking lately is Donald Trump, the 69-year-old New York real estate developer and casino entrepreneur who found a second career in middle age as the host of NBC ‘reality’ television shows — The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice — in which he famously tells dismissed contestants: “You’re fired.”

After flirting with a presidential run for years, Trump jumped into the race last month, and gave the rest of the field a masterclass in standing out in a crowd. You just have to say something provocative. Trump singled out Mexican immigrants, pledging to build a “great, great wall” on our southern border to keep them out of the US.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

From the standpoint of the national Republican party, Trump could hardly have said anything more damaging. The US Hispanic population is growing by the day — accounting for 10.8 per cent of the eligible electorate in 2012 — and tilting to the Democrats at the same time. To win back the White House, Republicans know that they will have to attract more of the very people Trump disparaged — the Mexican-Americans who make up the bulk of the nation’s Hispanic population.

But Trump’s Mexican-bashing made sense for him in the current context of the congested Republican race. The party’s presidential debates are scheduled to start next month on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel — and only the top 10 candidates in the opinion polls will be allowed on stage. To qualify, Trump had to do something and his anti-immigration remarks certainly helped. He vaulted into second place among Republican presidential hopefuls in the latest CNN/ORC poll — with the backing of 12 per cent of Republican or likely Republican voters, behind only Jeb Bush at 19 per cent. The rest of the Republican field could be found languishing in the single-digits.

During the debates, other Republican candidates could turn things around to an extent by saying nicer things about Hispanics. One could easily imagine Jeb Bush, for example, coming to the defence of his wife, Columba, a naturalised US citizen who was born in Mexico. That would even give Bush a chance to trot out his version of the kinder, gentler, compassionate conservative act that members of his family traditionally perform before they get into office and send in the tanks.

The danger for Republicans is that the Donald, as the tabloids call him, will ultimately qualify for the debates and dominate the action. He isn’t a professional politician, after all. He is a reality TV star of veritable Kardashian proportions (speaking metaphorically, not anatomically).

His goal might not be to gain state power or influence the national debate. He might just want to keep talking. Indeed, as a fellow New Yorker, I doubt he would ever put down roots in a cow town like Washington.

Republican elders are clearly worried about a potential Trump stampede. Reince Priebus, the party chairman, even called Trump on Wednesday to talk things over. According to the Washington Post, Priebus spent an hour urging Mr Trump to tone down his rhetoric. Trump, as is his right as an American, differed with the Post. Communicating via Twitter, he said: “Totally false reporting on my call with @Reince Priebus. He called me, ten minutes, said I hit a ‘nerve’, doing well, end!”

I would feel sorry for the Republicans if not for the fact that they probably have themselves to blame for this state of affairs. So many people are able to run for president because conservatives have fought so hard against campaign-spending limits. The current numbers problem vexing the Republicans, in other words, stems from an underlying numbers problem that is affecting us all — the number of dollars in politics.

All it takes to mount a crackpot national campaign in the US nowadays is a peevish plutocrat with a cheque book. While Trump is doing the electoral dirty work himself, many of his well-heeled brethren are employing hired hands to engage in similarly self-indulgent forms of psycho-socio-political expression. The rich are getting what they paid for — and the funny thing is, it ain’t much.

— Financial Times