"Wonderful Donald" is the Presumptive GOP Nominee: What just happened?

On May 3rd, 2016, Businessman and Real Estate Developer became the presumptive GOP nominee. This seismic event will forever be remembered as one of the major turning points for the GOP, as well as the United States. Donald Trump is one of the first nominees in an era to have no political experience whatsoever before beginning a political run. In addition, Donald Trump has been widely panned as not having true conservative principles, a merely running on a populist message which has no sound basis in policy.

The story of Donald Trump’s rise to power is one that will be chronicled and examined for years. The basic premise can be shortened to a couple short paragraphs though. The GOP has been very discontent with the direction of the country during the Obama administration, and has tried to focus on fanning the anger of Americans to show that they are the party that can get the country back on the right path. However, the anger that the GOP was fanning toward Democrats in Washington spread to all politicians, and created the anger against the infamous “Establishment.” This led to the country begin to search for an outsider to come in and shake up Washington. Welcome Donald Trump. Donald Trump quickly began building a persona of “telling it like it is,” appealing to the nativists who feel left behind in a country they feel is now treating immigrants better than native citizens. Donald Trump also made deft work of his opponents, and began launching tough attacks never seen in modern politics to catch his opponents off guard. He kept the persona of “winning,” and decided to continue a stream of controversial statements to stay in the media, and allow the campaign to avoid having to spend money on targeted media campaigns. After whittling down his opponents, he continued taking contrarian positions that made a lot of sense on the face—when close analysis is not done—which continued to expand his base. By having a base that is extremely committed, and had no chance of going to another candidate, he was given some flexibility to tune his message to continue to get more supporters. He continued to win states and build momentum, and near the end, it became extremely difficult for any other candidate to claim to have a path forward. As the other candidates found that their only path would be through a contested convention, Mr. Trump was able to successfully make the case that the party would steal the nomination from someone who had the most popular votes. This argument began cracking the wall of “Establishment” resistance again, and led to some more Republicans to begin voting for him. Near the end, it was clear that he would only need to win about a 1/3 of the delegates left to become the Republican nominee and achieve the requisite 1237 delegates to clinch the nomination. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Governor John Kasich (R-OH) dropped out shortly.

Moving forward, Donald Trump has the lowest favorability among any candidate running currently, and is also running with a divided party. The highest elected leader of his party, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), has said that he cannot support Donald Trump yet because of the deep divides that exist on policy. The general election is just becoming, it will be interesting to see if “Wonderful Donald,” as he calls himself, will be able to unite the party. One thing is clear, this is going to be one of the most interesting elections in modern history.