Trump and Berlusconi are remarkably alike. They are both billionaire businessmen who claim that the government should be run like a business. They are both gifted salesmen, able to appeal to the emotions of their fellow citizens. They are both obsessed with their looks, with their hair (or what remains of it), and with sexy women. Their gross manners make them popular, perhaps because people think that if these guys could become billionaires, anyone could. Most important is that both Trump and Berlusconi made their initial fortunes in real estate, an industry where connections and corruption often matter as much as, or more than, talent and hard work. Indeed, while both pretend to stand for free markets, what they really believe in is what most of us would label crony capitalism.
Party Rules to Streamline Race May Backfire for G.O.P.
And they said they were increasingly convinced that Donald J. Trump could exploit openings created by the party’s revised rules to capture the nomination or, short of that, to amass enough delegates to be a power broker at the convention.
.. And one reason his candidacy seems strong is a change by the party in hopes of ending the process earlier: making it possible for states to hold contests in which the winner receives all the delegates, rather than a share based on the vote, starting March 15, two weeks earlier than in the last cycle. Ten states have said they will do so.
If Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote.
.. Some Republicans still wince when recalling how Pat Buchanan’s 1992 challenge to President George Bush resulted in his winning a prime-time speaking slot at the convention that renominated Mr. Bush.
“And that set the tone for the election,” Mr. Hohlt recalled of Mr. Buchanan’s fiery speech. “Do we end up again in one of those kinds of deals?”
Willing to Spend $100 Million, Donald Trump Has So Far Reveled in Free Publicity
Spending is not a preoccupation, Mr. Trump said, in part because he has spent so little this summer. Advisers say he has spent $1.9 million of his own money so far, mostly on about 40 paid campaign staff members and standard expenses to travel and hold events.
.. When Mr. Trump joined the race in mid-June, he said he expected to spend $15 million in television commercials over the first three months, but he has yet to run any.
“I’ve gotten so much free advertising, it’s like nothing I’d have expected,” he said. “When you look at cable television, a lot of the programs are 100 percent Trump, so why would you need more Trump during the commercial breaks?”
Donald Trump May Not Have a Second Act
Trump has identified a clear problem to which many Republican voters respond: America doesn’t “win anymore.” And he has offered a simple solution that only he can provide: Trump “will make America great again.”
The fact that the problem and solution are laughably vague is a virtue. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been forgettable exactly because she has insisted on promoting a myriad of highly specific solutions to very concrete problems before she has laid out the one big problem she wants to solve. (In fact, it’s not so different from how Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign of “hope and change” crushed Clinton’s campaign of policy white papers.)
.. Again, Obama’s historic 2008 campaign is a good point of comparison: the vague promise of “hope and change” was married to an enormously sophisticated national operation that tended to the mechanics of winning the delegates needed to capture his party’s nomination.