"My worry is not that Trump will lose the general election," commented a "top Republican official" during the recent unpleasantness (or charm) of the GOP's primary carnage. "It’s that he could win."
The official's worry stemmed, no doubt, from the creeping horror of what Robert Reich has labeled Trump's "anti-politics": the plutocrat's agronomic virtuosity in sowing "hostility and suspicion" among the grumpy proletariat. Trump, observed Reich, is neither left nor right nor ultimately center; he's merely a paranoid bundle of malice which connects exceptionally well with latent discontent. Searing national divisions — not cheerful unity — could carry Trump to the White House.
Such has been the theory, the speculation, the "worry."
But gentlemen, your worries are already over — or should be. In fact, one wonders what ever upset you so. For while Trump's "anti-politics" are unquestionably paranoid and malicious and appealing to the anarchic element of the American electorate, they are — unmodulated — also massively self-destructive. And Mr. Trump is anything but modulated. Indeed he can't modulate, for that would betray the very maliciousness that made him so popular among the grumpy.
Trump needn't be "defined" by the Clinton campaign. He is ruinously defining himself — and this week, he has done what may be the most brilliant job of it yet. In "unleash[ing] a blistering assault" against New Mexico's Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, Trump compelled none other than "The Hammer," Tom DeLay, to remark: "I have no other word for it: it's just stupid politics … and it just blows my mind. Where is he going to get his coalition to win?"
Was a blistering assault on the popular Hispanic chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association enough for Trump for one week? Not quite. On the following day, yesterday, in Anaheim, Calif., he decided, in an almost inexplicable display of supererogatory stupidity, to lavish yet more scorn on Mitt Romney (a "choker" who "walks like a penguin"), as well as on "low-energy" Jeb Bush. However choking or unenergetic they are, both gentlemen still have their constituencies. To insult them after he's won the primaries is "just stupid politics."
One may call them "anti-politics" if one wishes, but "anti-smarts" is more fitting. Still, Trump's strategic imbecility was, is, and shall remain indispensable to his campaign. He can't be presidential since being sordidly unpresidential is what got him where he is, and it's what will retain his anarchic element of the American electorate — which isn't anywhere close to 50 percent.