The Donald Gets Serious

Last week we brought you the best on Willard 'Mitt' Romney. Now, in a semi-regular series on the 2012 presidential hopefuls, we examine Donald 'The Donald' Trump.

Remarkably, real-estate mogul Donald Trump is polling the best of any potential GOP presidential candidates, helped by name recognition and his attachment to the “birther” movement seeking documentation of Barack Obama's citizenship.

And what looked like a publicity stunt for Celebrity Apprentice has taken a turn toward legitimacy, writes Scott Conroy of RealClearPolitics.com. “Trump's outreach to the evangelical community and key officials in the early voting states suggest that he is actually considering a presidential campaign,” he says. The billionaire has rallies planned for New Hampshire and Iowa – two key states in the primary races – and just gave a string of television interviews to top political reporters. “But it is only April of 2011, after all,” says Conroy, “and the oxygen that Trump has sucked up over the past month is unlikely to keep him going through November of next year.” One can only hope.

That new-found attention will bring scrutiny that the brash and bouffanted Trump surely won't like, predicts the Washington Post's Jonathan Capeheart. “Trump is learning very quickly that it’s all fun and games until people take your faux run for president seriously,” says Capeheart, bringing up those interviews this week that drew comparisons of Trump to Sarah Palin stumbling through softball questions lobbed by Katie Couric. And like Palin in 2008 and Ross Perot in 1992, Trump is a fresh face, positioned as an “outsider” and willing to speak his mind, says Capeheart: “And that person almost always reveals profound gaps in knowledge, wafer-thin skin, and a stunning lack of preparation for the kinds of questions asked of someone seeking to be the leader of the free world.”

The Los Angeles Times' in-house conservative columnist, Doyle McManus, dismisses Trump's machinations for the White House, suggesting that his overnight popularity is due to dissatisfaction with an uninspiring crop of Republican hopefuls. “The GOP voters who told pollsters they would favour Trump listened to that list of names and replied, in effect, 'none of the above,'” says McManus. Trump's flirtation with candidacy has leeched support from supposed front-runners Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Palin, and now the race for the party's nomination is wide open.

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... And the Mitt is Off!