Friday, February 19, 2016

Is Trump impossible to stop? No, but ...

By Rob Janicki

As long as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ben Carson and Jeb Bush all remain in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, there is no rational reason to believe that anyone in this group will pull ahead of the leader of the pack, Donald Trump.  There may be a jockeying of positions back and forth, but it is doubtful that there will be any substantial change in the positions of the current candidates.

The more times Trump wins a primary race, or places a close second, no matter by how slim a margin, the more Trump will look like the inevitable winner by popular acclaim.  Thus, it's simply time for Kasich, Carson and Bush to withdraw from the nomination process.  They are simply not viable candidates that can somehow turn around failing campaigns.  This will give American voters a true idea of the popular strength of Trump in relation to the remaining candidacies of Cruz and Rubio. 

Winnowing the GOP field down to three candidates will be absolutely necessary to give Americans a real understanding of the individual strengths of the three remaining candidates relative to each other.  Waiting for the GOP convention to determine the final nominee, might well be to the advantage of Donald Trump, although that is really unclear.  In any event, waiting for the convention to determine the eventual GOP nominee will only engender skepticism in the minds of many voters who might understandably believe that the eventual candidate was chosen by means other than a democratic process in some smoke filled back room at the convention. 

If political analysts are correct in their analyses, Donald Trump's share of the convention delegates is projected to remain constant in the 30 per cent range, which means he will not go into the convention as the winner of the GOP presidential nominee.  

Trump may well have a plurality of the delegates going into the convention, but that does not mean anything, unless he can peal off delegates committed from the other candidates he has already eviscerated in the primary process, to achieve a majority.  That does not seem likely, but not impossible either.  Kasich, Carson and Bush need to withdraw their candidacies well before the July GOP convention to part the political clouds hanging over the entire nomination process.

If the opposition to Donald Trump does not step forward and acknowledge the reality that staying in the race with no possibility of winning only plays into the strength of Donald Trump, Trump may well squeak out the narrowest of delegate margins to steal the GOP nomination.

It's time to see if Kasich, Carson and Bush are willing to set aside their own political ambitions for the benefit of seeing the demise of a demagogue bent upon capturing and essentially destroying the political right for generations to come or forever. 


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