Donald Trump: A true wild card
Donald Trump is attempting to extort the Republican nomination for president from the Republican Party.
At the very start of last Thursday night’s GOP televised debate, Trump was the only candidate who refused to pledge that he would endorse the eventual nominee of the party, whoever that might be. What’s more, he refused to say he would not run as an independent candidate if he lost the Republican nomination.
In other words, “Hand over your nomination or I might run against you.”
There’s no conceivable way Trump could become president without the Republican nomination, given the American electoral system. He would have to receive a majority of the electoral votes from the states, or else win his majority in the U.S. House of Representatives if no candidate won the states’ Electoral College votes.
Ain’t gonna happen.
What he would likely do as an independent candidate is to assure the victory of the Democratic candidate, who at this point would appear to be Hillary Clinton.
When Ralph Nader ran as an independent rather than as a Democrat in the 2000 general election, he helped Republican George W. Bush and hurt Democrat Al Gore.
In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot received 19 percent of the popular vote. It’s generally thought that most of those came from Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, thereby helping Democrat Bill Clinton defeat incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush.
When Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose candidate rather than as a Republican in 1912, the result was the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the defeat of incumbent Republican William Howard Taft.
In the 1860 election, the candidacies of two Democrats in the general election — one from the North and one from the South — resulted in the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln with a majority of the electoral vote despite Lincoln’s inability to win a majority of the popular vote.
Once in a while, strong independent candidates fail to damage the candidate of the party which they deserted.
In 1948, Progressive Henry Wallace and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond both abandoned their former Democratic home party to seek the presidency. Most political analysts expected them to cost incumbent Democrat Harry Truman the election to Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. Wallace and Thurmond each received over a million votes. But Truman won anyway.
But Wallace and Thurmond didn’t.
No candidate outside one of the two main parties has ever won the presidency. If Trump runs as an independent, he will become one of his favorite words — a loser.
It would be foolish at this point to predict whether Trump would run as an independent or not. Not many pundits thought he would actually jump into the Republican race, but he did. Very few predicted he would rise to the top of the Republican polls, but he did.
Trump is a master of “the deal.” He’s done hundreds, maybe thousands, of deals in real estate over his career. So maybe there are Republican kingmakers who might hope to offer him some plummy government leadership position to keep him in the tent.
But it’s difficult to conceive what government job might tempt Trump, other than the presidency. It’s doubtful the GOP has anything to offer him. Buy him off with money? Not likely.
Trump’s a true wild card.
There’s just no telling at this point how his candidacy will play out in the 2016 presidential election.
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