http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/20/trump-tries-out-for-new-role-presumptive-nominee.htmlTrump tries out for new role: Presumptive nominee
By Chris Stirewalt Published April 20, 2016
TRUMP TRIES OUT FOR NEW ROLE: PRESUMPTIVE NOMINEE
The Republican nominating process has evolved for a moment just such as this: helping a damaged frontrunner stave off a challenge from a conservative insurgent and avoiding the threat of a chaotic convention.
What nobody knew was that the frontrunner this year would be Donald Trump.
And as Trump showed both in his remarks after his resounding victory in his home state and the promise of big money for the Republican consultant class, he is willing to try to play the part that was written for another player: Mr. Inevitability.
And with a quintet of states from his region set to vote next week, he is at the threshold of fully assuming the role. If Trump’s New York knockout is reflective of how he will fare in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland on Tuesday – and a new Connecticut poll out today suggests it could be – you will see the weakening resistance to Trump perhaps not shatter, but complete its shift from mainstream effort to the more traditional conservative insurgency.
Now, Trump isn’t close to where his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton stands after her bell ringer of a New York win. She was already the apotheosis of Democratic establishmentarianism. With her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, retreating to Vermont and his senior advisor saying the members of Team Sanders would "sit back and assess where” they are after next week’s contests, Clinton is already passing over into that Valhalla of every weak frontrunner: the dispiriting of her party’s base.
A week from today we could see Clinton be “presumptive” no more but actually take the coveted modifier “inevitable.”
For Trump, it’s more complicated.
Like the human immune system, political parties have antibodies that attack pathogens. Party rules, the nodding and whispered assents of the mandarin class, the flow of campaign cash and the availability of top staffers all add up to a defense system to keep parties healthy, at least for those who populate their broad establishments.
This week in Florida, Trump’s newly acquired consultants will be making two cases to party elders at the RNC’s spring meeting. First, that Trump can behave himself and wouldn’t be the general election catastrophe that poll after poll after poll suggests. Second, that the only remaining options for Republicans are to accept Trump as inevitable and help him win on the first ballot or face riots and inevitable general election catastrophe.
It’s not the easiest argument to make, but for now, all Team Trump needs is for Republicans to do nothing. The time will come when Trump will need the “corrpupt” system to swing in behind him and shut off Sen. Ted Cruz’s crew before the first ballot. But for now, agnosticism about the new K Street-friendly, more mannerly Trump is all the frontrunner needs.
And if Trump sweeps next week’s primaries, the argument will get far easier. Especially since Trump’s counterpart would be playing to type. Many in the party had already cast Cruz as conservative insurgent and bitter ender. The grandees may never have seen Trump as the wounded frontrunner to be shepherded through, but they will have no trouble seeing Cruz as the enemy.
Every candidacy, like every movie or novel, requires some degree of the suspension of disbelief. Highly ideologically motivated – or in the case of Trump, attitudinally motivated – voters are the most willing to suspend their disbelief. A Ron Paul delegate in 2012 would have greeted theories about a convention fight and a ricochet nomination with the kind of credulity that a Star Wars fan would explain how a 300-year-old Wookie can fight a space octopus.
Trump’s effort to get party elders to suspend their own disbelief for him in the same way they did prior frontrunners will not be as easy as it was for those who came before him. But of the alternative is to face the threatened riots and violence from Trump supports, a chaotic convention and inevitable defeat in the fall anyway, they might be quite willing to believe – at least for a little while.
