Hello friends. After taking a few days off to work on some matters independent of the blogosphere, we're back. And, what better way to enter the blogosphere than with the departure of Donald Trump?Let's face it, Donald Trump probably wasn't ever going to be president. Who knows if he even would have made it through a tough primary fight. But the guy made politics fun for awhile. And, as much as the press has derided him, it still gave them something to talk about.
Trump scored big interviews with some of the top journalists, including Meredith Vieira, Piers Morgan and George Stephanopoulos. And then, there were moments like this:
Presidential? Not really. But, new and different? You'd better f'n believe it.
As it turns out, this showmanship was apparently little more than self-promotion by a reality television star. But, it had an impact on presidential politics.
When Donald Trump started playing presidential footsie with the American voters, he was entering an arena where other candidates on the GOP side had yet to catch fire. And, as easy as it was to discount Donald Trump's candidacy as silly, there is no question he tapped into populist sentiment and forced the dialogue in a certain direction on issues like the President's birth certificate. (In fact, he most likely forced action on that issue.) For good or for ill, Trump made voters and the press pay attention to the presidential race, and that's never a bad thing.
With Trump out of the race, we still see a field of GOP candidates that hasn't really gelled yet, which makes it tough to have a coherent partisan message or a unified voice against the current administration. Who will take up that mantle -- not necessarily the mantle of Donald Trump, who never put it all together, but of the credible, personable candidate who asks tough questions of President Obama and proposes his/her own set of solutions?
The bottom line is that Trump filled a void by speaking the minds of disenchanted voters across America. It was a void that existed before Trump started talking politics, and it's still there now.
The GOP needs someone to fill that void. Until then, Obama appears to have the presidential field all to himself.
Trump made was a good "carnival barker" and "sideshow," to quote Obama. His exit gives the GOP field an opening for real contenders to challenge Obama in the general.
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