re: #84 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

It was assumed that he would flame out before the GOP convention.

Nobody wanted to attack him directly, even to return the insults he heaped on them, because they wanted to be in a position to pick up his supporters.

They were loyal to Trump and Trump alone, to his style and his message. And the fact that he was not a political “outsider”, but the very embodiment of the anti-politician allowed him to get away with saying and doing things that would have derailed the campaign or even the career of most anyone else.

It wasn’t just that he was an anti-politician: it was because, thank to NBC and “The Apprentice”, he was marketed as a highly successful businessman, playing into the Reagan/GOP mythology that to flourish, the nation needed to be ruled according to business practices, rather than standard government policies. “Business good, government regulations bad” was the traditional mantra as espoused by Grover Norquist, Ayn Rand, and others of the GOP intellectual elite. If Reagan had not been a reputed billionaire, he would never have gained this traction.