Now, I am coming over to your side. I have read and heard too many comments stating that if Bernie is not the nominee, the person is going to vote Trump. My brain is really struggling with that.

 Trump's fact-free, emotionally-laden, policy-empty, racist-filled candidacy is just up the Republican primary voters' alley.  The Republican establishment can easily overlook those flaws, for who amongst them does not appreciate them, if it appears that Trump has a decent chance of winning the general election.  

If Trump does not succeed in scarfing up the nomination, it is difficult for me to see how the party rallies around Cruz or Rubio--despite the fact that not being Trump is being no less a right wing radical. But, the crowds want it loud and impolite.

I hope, too, that the 'if not Bernie things will be the same' with either party, will reconsider that position if Mrs. Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

http://tinyurl.com/jsj4e89

The Republican front-runner is "saying what a lot of Americans are thinking but are afraid to say because they don't think that it's politically correct," she said. "But we're tired of just standing back and letting everyone else dictate what we're supposed to think and do."

http://tinyurl.com/go7h9ws

Five-time Jeopardy! champion Tom Nichols1 writes today about why so many people are attracted to Donald Trump. Nichols is a Republican,2 but he makes it very clear that he deeply loathes Trump ("hideous," "narcissistic," "creepy," "stupid," etc.) and will never vote for him. So what's his take on Trump's popularity? Is it due to economic insecurity? Inchoate anger? Bubbling racism and xenophobia? Hatred of the Republican establishment?

Nah. He says Trump's rise is basically the fault of the left:

It's another season of the Bachelor. Ben seems very vulnerable and lacking in self-confidence. It's hard to tell if that's the way he really is, or its just a story line crafted from the "edit" from last season. (His reaction to being rejected was to voice his fear he was unlovable.)

NOT make you want to set your DVR?

Those people standing in line are true believers or more likely, truely angry.

Esquire released a poll the other day showing Women more angry than men, for both parties.  Breitbart called Trump the Avatar of Anger.

Warning: the Breitbart link contains autoplay Flash video.  I linked to it only for its truely trollworthy and alliterative headline.

Lord knows what he [Paul Tsongas] would make of the fact that the arena named after him was filled to the rafters with people who came out and stood in line for hours on a winter's day to get all hot and bothered by the likes of the following:

   "I know exactly how to build a wall. I know the footings. I know exactly how deep they have to go. I know everything."

I would go deeper and longer into the policy prescriptions presented, if there had been any. The primary policy prescription is to elect He, Trump, because he knows everything, including enough smart, top guys who will help him in the unlikely event that he comes up against a problem about which he doesn't know everything. (He once again cites Carl Icahn and the rest of his proposed junk-bond Cabinet.) I would analyze the ideas presented to the loving audience, but the only idea presented was electing He, Trump, who knows everything. For example, he proposes that, to defeat ISIS, we should "take the oil." Taking the oil is the beginning and the end of the policy, the alpha and the omega of the idea. "We should be unpredictable," he says, and I don't really know what that means, but everyone cheered.

[...]

He does not deliver speeches. He delivers remarks. He recites his poll numbers. He explains his long fight against the odds that has resulted in said poll numbers. He mocks Jeb Bush and he sucks up to Tom Brady. He cracks that Hillary Clinton "has the biggest teleprompters," and everybody laughs a laugh straight out of a frathouse smoker, and he's rambling on to another topic, usually involving He, Trump. He did four minutes on how he filed the required documents regarding his financial affairs.

[...]

And everybody cheers. I am not prepared to explain why except to say that a lot of people in the audience identify more with his wealth than their own lives. He speaks to their deferred dreams and their frustrated ambitions. Trump gives them He, Trump as something to believe in. It only gets malignant when he also gives them someone to blame for why we are all not He, Trump. Immigrants. Muslims. They are why not everyone is He, Trump. That is why everyone needs He, Trump to show them the way. They can resist taking any of this seriously because He, Trump winks at them and tells them not to do it. He, Trump and his Top Men will handle the serious stuff. It's all a show and he's the star. He's not building a movement. He's building an audience. In 2016, that may be enough. Political alienation is a genuine phenomenon. It has been in development for decades. "Government is not the solution," said Ronald Reagan. "Government is the problem." In reality, government is the only product of politics. Alienate people from their government and you alienate them from their politics, and vice versa. All that's left is the show, and people will gravitate to the superior show. And that is what came to Lowell, in an arena named for a decent man whose entire career was based on a kind of politics radically different from the political vaudeville the arena hosted on Monday night.

And yet, the willingness of so many people to wait so long in such cold temperatures simply for the chance to see Trump speak would suggest that the idea that his supporters won't be the sort of people to sit through the long caucus process of Iowa or turn out to vote in the frigid cold of New Hampshire might be misguided.

Had he not moved to Manitowoc, he would would most likely not be in jail and living a pretty good life with the $36M settlement.