Trump is still doing far better than any serious pundit could have imagined, polling in the 20s, by going for the lowest, most racist, most hateful positions. It seems to me that he's capturing all the people who won't vote for any democrat because they're too nice. Today, he has signed a pledge to the GOP that he won't run as a third party candidate and made a speech that he's all in for the GOP. In my previous blog entry on this subject, I suggest that Trump is playing stalking horse for the Democrats. I see nothing to change this view.
Trump's success is only in the GOP and I'm pretty sure is only among GOP voters who are dumb enough to think that bluster and belligerence is helpful when you're playing in the big leagues. It's hard to imagine this is more than 20% of the voters under any circumstances--he'd only have to have about 10% overall support to get poll results he does. In the unlikely event that he actually wins the nomination, he'll get about 30% in the national election from the people who are more loyal to the GOP than sensible, and win only a few small states where there are very few non-republicans: Idaho, Utah, Mississippi and a few others, and lose by one of the biggest landslides in history. Success for the troll.
Because the support is functionally grass roots (even though Trump himself is the very opposite of that), if the more traditional GOP tries to run a third party candidate (Mitt Romney would be my best guess), it will end the GOP, and the defeat will be even more complete. The GOP is dumb, but I don't think that dumb.
Far more likely, the GOP will find some way of kicking Trump out of the process. Almost no matter how this happens, Trump will call foul and today's "pledge" will be torn up (and a few borderline people will turn against the GOP over this) Trump will take nearly all of his votes to the third party, and the final tally will be something like 55% for the D, 35% for the R, and 10% for Trump. The troll will have succeeded.
It's most likely that some other GOP candidate will get more votes than Trump in the end. If this happens, Trump will claim the election was rigged and will cry foul and run as a third party candidate. Given the behavior of the Republican leadership over the couple of decades, it almost certainly will be rigged, although the press may do no more about it than they did with the rigging of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Same final result, with Trump not taking quite as many votes from the GOP. Trolling success.
In any case, I think Trump has highlighted what drives an awful lot of GOP voters, and has forced the "normal" republicans to step all over themselves trying to outflank him... They are saying all sorts of things that would make them completely unelectable in a sane country and may even do that in America. He's forcing the press and even the Republicans to speak truths that they have been unwilling to give voice to for 40 years. Trump may actually achieve his slogan and "Make America Great Again", by giving an overwhelming victory to a sensible Democrat and a more progressive congress than we've had since FDR.
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