Donald Trump will be the nominee of the Republican Party. For the Republican Establishment, this is a nightmare scenario that is being playing out. They are desperate to stop him, but as each state votes, the outcome seems certain that Trump will defeat his rivals. How did this happen? How could this happen?

Trump has mocked the system to the party’s chagrin. He continues to put his finger in the eye of the Party in his quest for the nomination, daring them to defeat him. It is a classic example of them against us, with Trump being the ultimate outsider.

His strategy has been simple. Stake out radical positions as radical as can be while you promise the country a return to greatness. In the fulfillment of his strategy, a third of the party faithful have signed on to the idea that you can turn back the clock. In a multi-candidate race having a third of the electorate on the Republican side has been enough to solidify his position as the first among many in the race to the White House.

The Donald of reality TV already had name recognition when he set about to become the Republican nominee. He skillfully parlayed his notoriety by using as his first gambit, the public’s anger regarding illegal immigrants. Look at what he did. He promised to build a wall, a terrific wall to keep the bad guys out. This gambit got everyone’s attention, then he next built on the fear and anger by promising to remove the evil doers and promised the American people that they won’t have to pay for the wall, that Mexico will pay for it.

Who is he kidding? Do any of you really believe that Mexico would pay for the wall? Now he had you, he knew that people would vote for him because he was saying what people wanted to hear.

Now that he was riding high with the attention being focused on his campaign by the media he trotted out another fear tactic, the threat of terrorism. He promised to keep us safe by not allowing any Muslims to enter the country. Again, his monstrous statement did not matter, for the voters were only hearing what they wanted to hear, that somehow if only we could keep them out of our country, that we would be safe.

If those promises were not enough, Trump added one more promise that would appeal to many Americans, and that is the promise that somehow we could turn back the clock and make America buy, American made goods. This promise is what is most intriguing, the promise that our goods, our American made goods can be competitive again. Who doesn’t want to produce and purchase American made products?

In this the ultimate bait and switch gambit, Donald Trump has sold us on buying something that will cost us a lot more than we think, when it comes to paying for what he alleges will be cost us very little. This is the con artist in him. We can not go back and undo globalization, but once again he is promising us the moon when all he can deliver is hope and nothing more.

Donald Trump has been the ringmaster in this charade. He has promised us the Moon. For those who support him they don’t care what he says about anything as long as the hope for security from illegal immigrants and the promise of keeping terrorists away from America exist. They have bought into the lie that he can have us return to another time and place when America made things that we could see on the shelf. Unless we are willing to pay more for what we would make, it is all a pipe dream and he is the ringmaster promising what he can not possibly deliver. Wake up America before it is too late.