Serious question: if "rapists," McCain's war record, Kelly fiasco and getting hit by Fox/Jeb/other GOPers hasn't put Trump away, what will?
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 11, 2015
I'm not sure anything will harm Trump, at least as a GOP primary candidate -- but if anything does, I wonder if it could be this:
After a weekend of controversy and campaign infighting, Trump embarked on an effort to bulk up a depleted staff and to flesh out specific policy proposals....Do you honestly think Trump's policy papers are going to have actual policy in them? I don't -- at least not much.
After the weekend departure of longtime political adviser Roger Stone over the weekend, The Washington Post and POLITICO’s Mike Allen reported that the campaign was ready to launch a hiring spree and release a string of detailed policy papers....
Stone had prepared a series of policy papers for the campaign before his departure....
And the issues on which the campaign has promised to issue policy papers -- immigration, veterans, health care, the Second Amendment and the economy -- are all points covered by Stone in a debate prep memo prepared for Trump and obtained by POLITICO. The Post first published excerpts of the memo.
... A campaign insider said the policy papers were being vetted by outside experts....
But what if they do? What if he soon has definable positions on real issues? What if he talks in some detail about issues, rather than just uttering an endless series of bombastic generalizations?
Wouldn't that break the spell?
As it is, every Trump fan now thinks, I don't know what Trump would do as president, but he'd do things right, because that's the kind of guy he is -- a guy who does things right. Trump is a blank canvas right now -- if you're a right-wing idiot, whatever you want is what you assume he'll do. But if starts staking out specific policy positions, he'll be, y'know, a politician. He'll stop being a fantasy sugar daddy who will just make the country all better without ever telling us how. He'll have a tax plan that boring wonks can pick apart and assess in terms of who'd pay more and who'd pay less. He'll have a budget plan that will either add up or -- I'm nearly 100% certain -- not add up. People's pet programs might be cut! He'll no longer be the magic solver of problems! He'll be a guy monkeying with the tax code and possibly goring your ox!
Or he could just put out a bunch of platitudes with no detail. That's much more likely. Or he might just say these position papers are coming out any day now, but they'll never arrive. (Sort of like the real GOP's Obamacare-replacement vaporware.)
But if he does do detailed policy papers, I really think he'll regret it. It will diminish his aura. He won't be a political John Beresford Tipton anymore. He'll be just another pol.