I have followed American politics long enough for me to reverse my previous prediction that Jeb Bush would come from behind to snatch the nomination from Donald Trump.
I have followed American politics long enough for me to reverse my previous prediction that Jeb Bush would come from behind to snatch the nomination from Donald Trump.
I was going to wait until Super Tuesday to give up on Jeb Bush, but not anymore. Bush is showing from the opinion polls and from his body language that he is arguably not up to the task to defrock Donald Trump this late in the game.
Bush and the rest of the Republican candidates are running against a man who has broken every rule in the book and has managed to get away with it. While Bush is spending more than 32 million dollars to get any publicity or traction, Trump has spent only a fraction of that and is still leading in the polls by double digits.
A few in America have compared Trump to Ronald Reagan who was ridiculed and written off as having no chance to beat sitting-President Jimmy Carter but the guy went on to finally beat President Carter in 49 out of 50 States in a landslide victory.
The comparison of Donald Trump with Ronald Reagan is a bit misleading, given that Reagan was a two-term Governor of California, the biggest state in America. Reagan had executive experience that Donald Trump does not have. Donald Trump would tell you he is the smartest and the greatest businessman the world has known, but he would not tell you how many times he has had to file for bankruptcy as a business mogul.
Since when has business experience been the gold standard for anyone who will be President in America? If that were so Mr. Walton of Walmart Company worldwide or Michael Bloomberg the former Mayor of New York would have been President a long time ago.
Mitt Romney the businessman-turned Governor of Massachusetts and the first man to turn the Winter Olympics into a profitable venture would have beaten the community organizer/constitutional lawyer in 2012 if business experience was such a big factor in electing a President as Trump is suggesting.
However, Trump is arguing otherwise and thus far has shown he may be right due to the resentment he is encouraging amongst radical elements of the Republican Party.
Allow me to briefly touch on the rules in American Politics that Donald Trump may have broken. What exactly are those rules and how do they play out in a possible match-up of Donald Trump against a Hillary in the general election next November? I am also going to examine whether or not opinion polls projection on Donald Trump are grossly exaggerated or understated and how opinions polling in general as a science in America is responsible for much of the undeserved publicity for Donald Trump.
I have never seen any candidate talk like Trump not even Ross Perot would have spoken the way Trump has. It is a complete outrage, but his Republican supporters don’t care and that is why the man has continued to lead in the polls and by defying or breaking all of the rules in the book.
Rule number one is that any presidential hopeful or candidate in America would, at least, try to be presidential in the way they speak. The rule does not expect a candidate to talk a lot of trash like Trump is doing. The rule does not have any room for somebody who will be recklessly aggressive and insulting and demeaning to his other competitors as openly as Trump has done.
Trump would tell you he went to some Ivy League school and he often boasts that he is brighter and far smarter than the rest of his competitors. He would disparage their executive experience while extolling his own virtues as a bully negotiator who will make a mockery of other world leaders regardless of the strength they all bring to the table. He passes judgment on everybody competing with him calling them names and dismissing them as light weight and Lilliputians and doing so with arrogance and careless abandon. An Angela Merkel of Germany or a David Cameron of the UK or a Justin Trudeau of Canada or Dlema Youseff of Brazil, talk less of KGB Vladimir Putin would cut Donald Trump to size because they are no pushovers and they are smart as hell.
His demonstration of strength cannot be compared to the strength shown by Reagan when he told Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Reagan did not talk in monosyllables and dismiss with the wave of the hand what his opponents are saying.
If the election boils down to a battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton after the Parties’ Conventions, I can tell you that the election is going to be very interesting to watch.
I wrote in my last article on the last Republican debate about the figure of speech made by Ted Cruz when he talked about the Arsonists and the Fire Men but I stop short of saying who the arsonist is and who the Fireman is between the Republican and the Democrats. I want to end this piece by saying that the Republican represents the arsonist while the Democrats represent the Fire Man. The comparison could not be starker with the possibility of Donald Trump and Hillary becoming their party nominees.
One more quick point before I draw the curtain on this write-up Now tell me one politician all over the world and I would show you a million who live and die by telling lies. I mean all of them on both sides of the isle. All the close to 22 on the Republican side including the three on the Democratic side have lied or exaggerated at every turn of event. But Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are award winners on the Republican side. Even Bernie Sanders who stake his reputation on telling the truth have lied that his staff did not try to take undue advantage of the Clinton campaign by attempting to steal their data for their own selfish gain. Why fire those staff if Bernie is really persuaded that they have done nothing wrong. Hillary herself said that ISIS have been going round showing some videos of Donald Trump Statements as part of their tool for recruitment strategy. When the fact checkers look into the allegation it was found to be less than accurate.
Politicians without exception all lie, and those of them who make it to the White House like Barack Obama also lie or twist the facts if it works to their own advantage.
So let nobody pull a fast one on you by telling you that Hillary needs to be disqualified because she has lied or twisted a few facts to synchronize with the case she wants to make. They all do it. But Trump would be the greatest liar of all because he would lie and not show the slightest sign of it. I am predicting that the Republican Party establishment is going to sandbag and dump him at the last minute.
The strategic withdrawal of Lindsey Graham from the race today is the opening salvo to that reality, and a few more Republican candidates are going to follow him between now and end of January or first week of February.
The gang-up is going to happen fairly quickly. But they must expect to have a big fight on their hands as Donald Trump is not going to go away without a big polarizing fight because of his insatiable ego. That infighting and polarization would be to the great advantage of Hillary who is going to crush whoever finally emerges as the Republican nominee. That is my prediction today but that could change tomorrow if more facts and indicators become available.
I rest my case.