Too much is being written about Trump as a dazzling innovator of Republican absurdity, so I was happy to see Krugman this morning put him in the GOP's historical context of buffoonery-cum-leadership:
[W]hile Mr. Trump doesn’t exude presidential dignity, he’s seeking the nomination of a party that once considered it a great idea to put George W. Bush in a flight suit and have him land on an aircraft carrier.
Trump may be a political prodigy, but he's also a continuation; he has no more invented pseudoconservative burlesque than Mozart invented the concerto. Today's Mr. Trump would have been impossible without yesterday's Republican shoulders for him to mount and then bray on — those mighty, cry-till-you-laugh shoulders of George W., another reality TV star of meticulous scripting and yet unscripted calamity; the eye-popping, magic-asterisk tricks of a Rep. Paul Ryan, GOP "intellectualism" of metaphysical fantasy; the herded clownishness of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and other once-presidential luminaries of Palinesque slapstick; the sober Mitt Romney converted into a barking fanatic; and the entire GOP run of flamboyant hostility-as-policy, from the Gingrich Revolution to the Tea Party.
Trump is the norm, not the outlier. True, he's far above average in methodology, but he's the straight-down-the-middle essence of all-hat-no-cattle conservatism, to put it in familiar Bushian terms. He is the magical tax-cutting, defense-building budget-balancer; he pals with otherworldly Palins; he is the barking fanatic of primary fanaticism; he is the feral, ineluctable id of Gingrichism-through-Tea Partyism; and he is wearing a flight suit. Krugman summarizes:
The point is that those predicting Mr. Trump’s imminent political demise are ignoring the lessons of recent history, which tell us that poseurs with a knack for public relations can con the public for a very long time. Someday The Donald will have his Katrina moment, when voters see him for who he really is. But don’t count on it happening any time soon.
My only difference with Krugman here is that virtually no one, other than Team Jeb, is predicting Trump's "imminent political demise." To expect the enemy to melt away or to bank on the enemy's implosion in the absence of outside firepower is merely an expectation founded in hope — perhaps the most strategically detached gamble I have ever witnessed in politics. Yet "detached" and "Jeb Bush" — the keeper of hope — go together, do they not?
The enfeebled Jeb! has launched personal sorties against Trump, but, because his exclamation point is imaginary, his sorties have been characteristically flat. No, razing Trump is a job for democracy's Lee Atwaters to tackle; political hitmen and barbaric media consultants with a hundred-million dollars to play with.
Angles of effective attack are in all the field manuals: character assassination (Trump depicted as the triple incarnation of Joe McCarthy, Mr. McGoo and Bernie Madoff); Trump as an immense spender and big-government guy; Trump as absurdity; grainy quotations from Trump in B&W — e.g., On women: "You have to treat 'em like shit" (1992); or, one even more exploitable, "I play to people's fantasies" (1987), followed by, "It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it" (2000) — and above all, repetition. Specific "hits" are less important than rolling them out like thunder; you pound him and pound him, over and over, and the remorseless pounding becomes the story. Suddenly, by proxy Jeb looks "tough" — a no-bullshit, no-nonsense kind of guy; a ruthless and "energetic" counterattacker; indeed a counterattacker who takes the lead against Trump, unlike those wimpish others in the Republican presidential field.
It's either that, Jeb(!), or you'll see yesterday's prediction become tomorrow's reality; you'll be "out of the (serious) running" by fall, late fall at the latest. In fact, one might speculate with some legitimacy that you're already there. Your only hope is to blow throw those millions now, Jeb. It's that, or slide into permanent obscurity.
I offer this advice against interest, for I very much want to see the absolute ultimate in Republican absurdity accept the Republican nomination in Cleveland.