Ehlert: GOP Deserves ‘Hair Apparent’

In politics, especially in presidential races, a kind of vacuum is created when a party has no heir apparent, no leadership, no vision, no consensus — or all of the above. What can happen — actually, what did happen — is that a floundering Republican Party has been off-balance and without a succession-like plan since virtually the last days of the Ronald Reagan era. That’s when we knew Vice President George H.W. Bush was the heir apparent to Reagan. That’s the last time the party seemed to manifest consensus around who was going to run, who was going to back the candidate and how it was all going to play out. Because the GOP leadership has been basically adrift for a quarter of a century since — except when somebody named Bush comes on to the scene — the political vacuum has delivered a bad patch, which this year has led to the rise of Donald Trump and a collection of 16 other contenders looking to head aloft in the hot air of the GOP political chaos/I Opinion Editor Robert Ehlert , Idaho Statesman. More here .

Question: How close will billionaire Donald Trump come to winning GOP nomination for president?