We've seen the summer romance with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. It's been explored and analyzed with explanations and prognostications from, 'Trump will win the Republican nomination', to, 'Trump will not win a single primary'.
Meanwhile, two other outsiders have been silently and stealthily moving up in the polls. Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have been moving up to challenge Donald Trump and the more traditional leaders of the Republican herd. If nothing else, these two, along with Donald Trump, have clearly illustrated the discontentment of voters on the political right. Where this discontent will lead the Republican party, is far from being determined at this time and the outcome will not really begin to become clear until real voters actually show up and cast their votes in the early primaries of the nomination process.
That said, Iowa is the joker in the deck of primaries, because it is a caucus process and not a direct vote of the registered Republican electorate. In other words, the Iowa caucus process is a free for all among the candidates to get their supporters to each county caucus to vote for them. Unfortunately, the caucus process represents a very small percentage of voters of either party and the results have always been questionable as being representative of the national political mood of both parties.
Moving on, I believe we have seen the best that Donald Trump has to offer America and it may not be something to be admired, unless you are into demagoguery and view that particular behavior characteristic as an illustration of leadership or at least some kind of leadership potential. Remember the Hope and Change guy who promised to fundamentally change America? That hasn't worked out well for anyone, unless, of course, you are a died in the wool liberal progressive and have thus been vaccinated against ever perceiving reality.
I believe the summer romance with Donald Trump is dimming, while the emerging light of Dr. Ben Carson seems to be burning brighter with succeeding polls. Dr. Carson has to be viewed as the antithesis of Donald Trump's bombastic and certainly caustic style of campaigning, Dr. Carson could not possibly be anymore low key than he is and still be considered anything remotely close to a viable candidate. But, despite Dr. Carson's almost silent campaign, he has managed to capture the attention of the more cerebral thinkers among the discontented voters on the right. Will Dr. Carson sustain his current numbers, let alone increase them in the coming months? I don' think so. I think at fall's end, Dr. Carson's light will begin to be overtaken by still another outsider.
I'm beginning to see Carly Fiorina as a growing force among the three outsiders to challenge the traditional Republican candidates. Fiorina is bright, knowledgeable on the issues and very articulate as evidenced by her first appearance in the "not for prime time" Fox second tier Republican candidate debate. Almost every political pundit that watched Fiorina, agreed that she walked away the winner of that debate. Fiorina was so successful that she has managed to get CNN, host of the next debate, to reconsider its methodology in determining who it will select for its debate program, so as to include her in the prime time debate.
All of the above said, I believe that in the end one of the traditional Republican candidates will ultimately prevail to become the Republican nominee. My hope is that it will be someone as far from the epicenter of the Republican establishment as possible, while still being electable and possessing fundamental conservative political principles, beliefs and values.
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