He ran the table in Indiana, as he predicted he would, and his two remaining opponents Ted Cruz and John Kasich quickly folded their cards.
And with that we can now project Donald Trump the 2016 Republican Party presidential nominee.
For the GOP primary voters who hate politics, and every politician and government worker, Trump — who has never served as a governor, congressman, school board member or even on a city or town council — has been the ideal candidate for them.
Give the billionaire casino owner a lot of credit here. He took his high name ID from his years on reality television, and all the hundreds of hours of free publicity we in the media gave him every day for months, and simply thumped sixteen more experienced Republicans on his way to the nomination.
It is an historic accomplishment. Look at the list of prior GOP nominees that Trump now joins:
Abraham Lincoln, the ultimate political insider, was the first Republican president and arguably the greatest leader our nation ever had.
Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Governor from New York who, as president, took on the billionaire class and nationalized our park system.
Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s public service came from the military where he led our nation through the greatest battle of World War II.
Ronald Reagan started his career as a movie actor, and president of his union. Then he spent eight years as the governor of America’s largest state, and he ran for president three times before finally receiving the nomination.
Donald Trump has no public or military experience. He inherited a great deal of his wealth and built it into more wealth. He spent seven seasons as host of The Apprentice on television where he regularly fired contestants.
One of these may not be like the others.
This is what we have come to. The reality TV era of American politics.
Donald Trump is about to take Republicans, and the country, on a kamikaze mission the likes of which we have never seen.
The “we hate everything politics” crowd finally has their candidate. A guy who wants to be the top politician in the land without any practical experience in governing.
It reminds me of a patient who needs major surgery, blames the professional doctors at the Mayo Clinic, and decides to go with the quack miracle healer over on Angry Street.
How will that ever end well?
My guess is over half the country in November will think it’s ridiculous. In the electoral college we will watch all the battleground states, after the most negative presidential election in history, side with the professional — let’s call it establishment — candidate after all.
Still, for those of us in the media Donald Trump is a dream. He’s loud, obnoxious and unpredictable. He offers something new everyday that can lead our newscasts, especially during sweeps. He’s been good for the bottom line, and there is no question we must take our share of the credit/blame for the hundreds of free hours of airtime we handed to him during the primary season.
As someone who has studied presidential history for a long time it is difficult wrapping my mind around a nominee like Donald Trump.
The Republicans have made their decision that after eight years of Barack Obama the reality TV guy is best for the future of our nation.
Now we’ll wait for the rest of the country to weigh in.