During last night’s Republican debate, Jeb Bush threw a punch at the Donald, that pretty much sums up what most people are thinking. Trump is a chaos candidate.
Despite this realization, Trump continues to lead in the polls. After Ben Carson’s moment in the spotlight has led to higher scrutiny and falling support, Trump, who managed to capitalize on the decline of his populist rival, is now polling at 33 percent. Ted Cruz is currently in second place with 16 percent.
The debate was heavy on foreign politics and all candidate’s presented their strategies to keep the US safe and to combat ISIS. In this context, Jeb Bush attacked Donald Trump for the way he is running his campaign in general, and his plans to combat terrorism in particular:
“Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he’s a chaos candidate. And he’d be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe,”
Trump said of Bush: “With Jeb’s attitude we will never be great again”, riffing of his campaign slogan.
By now it has become clear that rational arguments don’t resonate with a large proportion of the Republican primary electorate and it is becoming increasingly obvious, that the other candidates will have to change strategy in order to combat the threat of a Trump candidacy. There probably are plans in the works already to attack Trump personally as well as on his conduct as a business man, but it appears that the party establishment is holding back until closer to the first contest in Iowa to really go after the Donald. The hope, that he would self destruct all by himself well before voting starts next year, which would make such an intervention unnecessary, however, seems to be evaporating with each passing week.