Donald Trump has leapt to the top of the Republican polls. His central issue, like his central issue last time, is a wedge issue1 that gives him fervent traction among a few crazies but his position is strongly against the position of most Americans and will totally alienate an important voting bloc. In order to get the 17% support from Republican voters that he has, you only need about 5% of the population: In a recent study2, 35% identify as Ds, 28% identify as Rs and 33% identify as independents. 5% is a huge number of people, something like 6.5M of the 129M that voted for president in 2012, but it's far from enough people to win a national election. What it is, is enough people to get a lot of people to watch you speak, get excited, and buy products from your sponsors. The people who are enthusiastic about Trump are almost exactly the people who are enthusiastic about Rush Limbaugh: Naive, older white people with a little money, poor critical thinking skills and knowledge of history, and a strong belief in their own patriotism and loyalty. Rush's show is about selling them various small scams: gold, reverse mortgages, cheap life insurance, etc., while getting them to vote the way he wants them to. Everybody is angry about something. Rush is good at kindling that anger into profits. Trump is doing the same thing.
But many of Trumps sources of income are appalled at his behavior and have pulled their backing. Trump doesn't seem to be phased by this at all. At the same time, Republican leadership has been doing everything they can to get Trump out of the race. He is forcing the "regular" republicans3 to move even farther to the right to try to keep up with him. No such candidate is even close to electable. Such a nominee is guaranteed only the 28% of voters that are so partisan that they will never vote for a Democrat, no matter how awful the Republican is. Republican leaders are running scared. There are 33 Republicans who have declared and 16 of them are seen as credible by leadership and the media, far too many to fit on a debate stage (even the 8 of last time was absurd.) and Trump's ability to attract media is giving him extra visibility. The guys they'd really like to see (Bush, Walker, and maybe Rubio), already competing for the rightmost edge of the political spectrum, have felt forced to say even crazier things than would be their wont.
How do I think this will play out?
1) Perhaps Trump thought this would be good for business and was surprised how his message so alienated his traditional sponsors while attracting the crazies. Having wrecked a large part of one of his businesses, he's decided to play the hand out. He may be as delusional as he seems and thinks he actually has a shot, but more likely he's enjoying himself and knows that when he crashes and burns he can live out the rest of his life (he's 69, an age when most people have already retired) in luxury, living off his real estate and casino fortune.
2) Perhaps he really believes in what he's doing and saying. I am very skeptical of this.
3) A Troll, in internet parlance, is someone who says things
contrived to disrupt and swing the conversation the way they want it to
go, strongly against the wishes of everybody else, and takes pleasure
from the anger this generates. I'm not the only person to have had this idea. Nate Silver's data-driven political prognostications have been
amazingly accurate.
4) He's a stalking horse/manchurian candidate. He's a pretty smart guy. Not quite as smart as he pretends to be, but smart enough to be terrified that any of the republican candidates might have a real chance to become president. He saw what Nader succeeded in doing, by accident, in 2000, what conservatives wrongly think Perot did in 1992, and what Anderson seemed to intentionally be doing in 1980. Only in 2000 did it really matter4, but it did matter, disastrously. He has said he will run as a third party candidate if he doesn't get the nomination--this would be exactly the right move if he actually is a manchurian candidate. He will draw votes...perhaps only 5%, but that's very likely enough to swing the election, since they will all be from the Republican. Moreover, when he does leave, he will leave a Republican field that remains much less electable than they would have been without him. He is known to have been supportive of Hillary in the past (he gave money to her 2007 campaign, and a lot of money to the Clinton initiative), to have been in favor of universal, single payer health care, to have been pro-choice. If this is still secretly his view, he is definitely playing a long game: he ran as a wack-job in 2012.
I'm usually a skeptic of conspiracy theories, but this one holds together unusually well. It will probably cost him less than what the Kochs are spending, and might be more effective. And he may actually be having fun.
(spoiler alert) In the Harry Potter books, it turns out that the biggest hero of all is Snape. He spent his life as a mole in the darkest of possible places, doing what he could to undermine Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and protect Voldemort's enemies where he could, while scrupulously not blowing his cover and seeming horrible and evil and drawing the hatred of everybody except the very people he was trying to destroy. He died thinking it all may have been for naught. I doubt the Voldemorts of the Republican party will have Trump killed, but I imagine it's crossed their mind. Severus Trump?5
1 Immigration is not really a problem. Immigration rates are low, crime rates among immigrants are exceptionally low (although not zero). Their presence is depressing wages a little at the low end, which generates anger among low wage workers, but not enough to actually do something about it--Like raise the minimum wage for everybody, including farm workers, to something livable.
2 http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/
3It would be a mistake to call any of the present Republican candidates "mainstream". Kasich, Christie and Pataki are well to the right of 75% of Americans, even though they are far to the left of the rest of the Republican field. The others are to the right of 95% or more. http://mr-entropy.blogspot.com/2014/05/overwhelming-majorities.html
4 http://mr-entropy.blogspot.com/2014/01/third-party-candidates.html
5 I'm not the only person to make this connection: https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/is-trump-pulling-a-colbert-on-the-republican-party/
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