On Sunday we asked Europeans the following as it relates to Donald Trump: “Idiot, Clown, or Hero?”
It’s not that those are the only three ways to describe the GOP frontrunner (we're sure we could come up with any number of other colorful adjectives both flattering and not), but they do a decent job of summarizing the three ways a Trump presidency could turn out.
Covering politics in Jacksonville, the largest city in the country led by a GOP mayor, I’ve had a unique perspective on presidential politics in the Sunshine State this cycle.
Mayor Lenny Curry was elected for many reasons, but one of them was that in early 2015, he was able to trumpet endorsements from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.
This was in the pre-Trump era, when Bush was considered the presumptive frontrunner, and Rubio was in the conversation.
An extraordinary article by Rusty Reno, who says he believes Trump is a dangerous figure, but who admits that the rise of Trump has taught him about his own errors of judgment. Trump, says Reno, reveals that the Republican Party is no real friend of Main Street and traditional American values. Excerpts:
I’ve been pretty explicit in this space for some time about how I think the Donald J. Trump phenomenon is based in something real. I mean, the grievances to which he speaks are not phantoms. What I find impossible to accept is that Trump is anything other than a voice of resentment. If he offered some kind of way to redress those grievances, to do something concrete about them, things would be different. If he had the moral probity and personal character to lead others to solutions, things would be different.
If you watched tonight’s GOP debate and are still confident in your decision to support Donald Trump, then you and I live on the same planet, but in different worlds. Tonight was a disaster for Trump. There can no longer be any doubt of these things: