The Trump bandwagon seems to be gaining more and more steam with each passing moment. At least two polls indicate Donald Trump is a legitimate early threat in the race for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. And while some point to his exploits in so-called birtherism plus his name recognition, columnist Mark Steyn has another theory on what the driving force of the Trump surge is.
On Thursday night’s “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Steyn blamed a gun-shy Republican Party, particularly in its recent budget battle Congress, for the shift in the polls toward Trump.
“I think he is serious about it,” Steyn said. “And you know the strange thing about this is that the Republicans play into his hands. The more they go the John Boehner line, the more their up on TV trying to explain to us why the most historic budget cut in the whole of historic history actually increases spending, the more people roll their eyes and say, ‘To hell with and a plague on the entire political class. Let’s just take a guy who’s a proven success at something even if it’s only real estate and reality TV shows and take a flyer on him.’ And so I think any kind of Trump phenomenon is in a sense sort of a response tentativeness and lack of ability to make things happen the Republicans are currently demonstrating.”
And if Trump should not win GOP nomination but decide to run as a third-party candidate, Steyn warned a result similar to the 1992 presidential election which Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush, with independent Reform Party candidate Ross Perot siphoning votes from the Republican side.
“I think undoubtedly that a ‘Trump Party’ run guarantees Obama a second term,” Steyn continued. “But you know at some point, real Republican candidates have to get in this game for real. And this is no time – this is just no time for the tentativeness we’re seeing from the Republican establishment. That’s just driving traffic to the Trump end of the spectrum.”
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