Why I think Trump will win the GOP(Republican) nomination and why I'm actually not that afraid of a Trump Presidency.

I usually don't blog about anything outside of photography on this site but every once in a while, an issue becomes so interesting that I have to chip in my 2 cents on it. This time the issue would be Donald Trump, the Republican Nomination, and the 2016 presidential election. This article will be broken down into two parts consisting of why I think Trump will win the republican nomination and second, why I would not be terrified of a Trump presidency.

First, lets get something out of the way. Trump is not my preferred choice to be our next Commander In Chief. He would be my third choice. I would prefer Bernie Sanders first, then Hillary Clinton, and then Donald Trump(I would actually probably prefer O'Malley third but he's not really relevent so no one cares). I know some people are wondering why the jump from Sanders and Clinton to Trump and I'll explain that later in this article.

Lets get to the first part of the article, why I believe that Trump will be the republican nominee despite the establishment not wanting him to be. Right now, the top two guys are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and everyone else is far behind them. The establishment actually hates Cruz more than Trump right now it seems because Cruz is actually far more conservative and unflinching in his stances. Many influential republicans such as John McCain have come out against Cruz lately rather than Trump. Republicans see Trump as a guy they can compromise and deal with while Cruz is the unflinching one that will not settle for anything less than 100% of what he wants. In the end Cruz seems to have more enemies in Washington than Trump so I don't see the establishment rallying around Cruz. Trump also has a 2 to 1 lead over Cruz in polls right now and has pulled ahead in Iowa(he is far ahead in other early states) so if he wins Iowa, he will squash Cruz like the cockroach he is. Some people still say that eventually the establishment candidates will all rally around 1 candidate and give that person the nomination. But here's the reality. Trump is already polling at 41% and rising. Carson will most likely drop out sometime along the line and most of his support has been flowing towards Trump. Carson is still at slightly above 6%. If and when he does drop out, I bet most of his remaining supporters will go to Trump as well swelling Trump to 45% or above. Cruz will probably stay in until the bitter end. However, if he does drop out, his voters are also from the "we won't vote for an establishment candidate" block and will gravitate towards Trump rather than the establishment. That would swell Trump up to 60% or more, pretty much guaranteeing him the nomination. But Cruz will most likely stay in while Carson will drop out which means after Carson, Trump will be at around 45% or so in a three-man race. With Cruz holding steady at 19% or so, that means whoever the establishment puts up will have about 35%, giving Trump a nice 10% lead if everything holds still and momentum had no effect. But the thing is, no one will drop out until the earlier states have finished and Trump seems poised to sweep Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada at this point. The momentum from those early victories will make quite a few people gravitate towards him and I think will easily put him at 55% or more. Some of the Cruz supporters may actually defect to Trump at this point and I doubt that all of the establishment candidate voters will rally around one guy if their preferred candidate drops out. So no matter how this plays out, I see Trump getting the nomination barring some catastrophic collapse and that seems unlikely since every crazy thing he says actually helps his poll numbers somehow.

Now, I'll explain why I'm not actually afraid of a Trump Presidency and why I'd prefer him over the rest of the GOP field. First of all, I don't expect him to win the election next November. I expect either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders to beat him by a fairly wide margin and perhaps even for the democrats to regain the Senate. But if by some act of divine will, he does win the presidency, I'm actually not that worried because aside from his asinine immgration policy and his terrible environmental record, he is actually far more liberal than the rest of the GOP field. In fact, outside of those two area that I just mentioned, he is far closer to Hillary Clinton politically than Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Yes, his proposal to build a giant wall and somehow get the Mexicans to pay for it and his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States are batshit crazy and are terrible ideas. However, he is not likely to be able to pull these things off because he would never get funding to build such a wall(I don't think Mexico is going to pay for it) and I doubt congress or the courts would allow him to ban people from entering the United States based on religion because there has been bi-partisan opposition to that proposal. Honestly, I think he is just saying these things to feed on the xenophobia of his base and would really back off on them if he wins the presidency because he knows they are unfeasible and crazy ideas. Remember, Trump is a businessmen and like all businessmen is an excellent opportunist. He is a master at playing people, especially stupid people. I honestly believe Trump is actually a very smart guy, but I also believe that many of his followers that buy what he is saying are bordering on retarded and he knows it too, that's why he is so good at drawing the support of the least educated in the republican party. Trump's environmental policy I think would be really bad as he is a person who likes chopping down forests to build giant and useless golf resorts but I don't think his policy would be much worse than other republican candidates. There is also the issues of Gay Marriage and abortion and Trump, in his checkered history has been on both sides. I think right now he is just saying what the crazies in the GOP want to hear to get their support but once he gets in office won't do much for those two issues either way because he, like myself, just really doesn't care much about those two issues and uses them as talking points to raise support. Also, I highly doubt he's really Christian because this is a guy who on TV during an interview said he has nothing he really wants to repent for. This is also a guy who has married three times, each time to a trophy wife of a younger age so he obviously doesn't give a crap about traditional family values. On his foreign policy, I really don't know. I don't think he actually has one which is okay with me because I don't think Bernie Sanders really has one either. On foreign policy I actually favor Hillary Clinton over anyone else because based on family history no policy is better than a Bush foreign policy. The things that I really judge presidential candidates on is the domestic policies of healthcare and taxation because I believe those two things effect far more people than any other policy. Despite the noise that abortion and gay marriage gets every election cycle, those are really niche policies that only effect a small number of people because allowing gay people to marry does not mean I have to all of a sudden become gay. On the issues of taxation and healthcare Donald Trump is actually very much like Sanders and Clinton. In an recent interview that you can see here, Trump basically says he wants government to pay for insurance for the uninsured and he wants people on wall street who are getting away with deductions to pay their fair share of taxes. He doesn't come right out and say he wants to raise taxes on the rich and wants universal healthcare, but it is what he is actually saying. Since I consider those two things probably the two most important things on domestic policy, that alone is enough to swing me to support him over the other republican candidates. It is also the reason, I'm actually not that afraid of a Trump presidency if it were to happen. I'd be more worried about our forest and furry woodland creatures should be become president rather than the state of the Nation because I think he'd actually do ok because the crazy stuff he says he won't do or will be stopped from doing and on healthcare and taxes, I actually agree with him on. Also, I think since he's running as a republican he'd be more successful in pushing those policies through than a democrat would be so I actually think he could get stuff done.

So, all in all, he's my third choice to become president of the United States.