So, Donald Trump

Republicans are starting to get kind of freaked out about this whole Trump thing.

“Donald Trump is like watching a roadside accident,” said former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. “Everybody pulls over to see the mess. And Trump thinks that’s entertainment. But running for president is serious. And the risk for the party is he tarnishes everybody.”

Those risks were amplified this week after a trio of polls showed him likely to earn a coveted invitation to the party’s debates, which ironically were restructured with the very goal of avoiding the circus-like atmosphere of 2012. Giving Trump a major platform just as the country is tuning in is not exactly the Big Tent the party’s bigwigs had in mind..

“I’m not excited about somebody as divisive as Trump or somebody as obnoxious as Trump being on the debate stage,” one RNC member confessed.

First, a bit of throat clearing: Trump is an ass. He's a liberal. He's not going to be President or even the nominee.

With that out of the way, contra that RNC member, I'm giddy at the prospect of the GOP having to deal with Trump.

He's very valuable in one key way, holding a mirror up to what is wrong with the GOP. The "serious" candidates are awful. They are milquetoast.

John Kasich and Marco Rubio...hey, SCOTUS ruled on gay marriage, move on.

Jeb Bush...nuke the filibuster to get rid of ObamaCare? Gee, I don't know let me think about that.

Scott Walker says he'd nuke the filibuster to repeal ObamaCare but his personality isn't exactly...electrifying.

Trump is a clown but he's says things people are feeling. I know conservatives hate the whole "I have feels!" thing but guess what...people do. You need to acknowledge them, reflect them and connect with them.

Republican candidates are far more at home in the boardroom or the congressional hearing room than the living room and it shows in the candidates they keep picking.

Remember how Romney got crushed on the very important "cares about people like me" metric? I bet Trump, for all his money, scores off the charts on that.

Rubio probably comes closest but as you saw in his reaction to the SSM decision, he's really most passionate about amnesty, how much he loves America and a hawkish foreign policy. He never really talks about smaller government or out of control government. He just wants to be the rationale manager of it.

Unless and until the GOP can find a candidate who hits the sweet spot of being seen as a plausible President and caring about people's lives, it's going to be in big trouble.

posted by DrewM. at 12:18 PM

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