Donald Trump is leading the Republican field in North Carolina, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The billionaire businessman has the support of 16 percent of GOP primary voters in the Tar Heel State in the latest survey from left-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP)…

PPP found Trump has a 55 percent favorability rating with a 32 percent rating him unfavorably.

Trump is especially popular with “very conservative voters,” PPP found, with 66 percent of them seeing him favorably versus 24 percent who hold a negative view. He also claims 29 percent support among younger voters and 20 percent support with men.

Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham is launching a protest of the “Brad Pitt” debate…

Graham, at distinct risk of being left out, suggesting Brad Pitt, the A-list star of movies like Fight Club and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, “would have a better shot of being on the debate stage than real candidates for president” because the current “criterion favors celebrities and candidates who have run previously with high name recognition.”

Another celebrity-turned-presidential candidate, real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, has polling numbers that give him a virtual lock on an onstage seat. 

Presidential campaigns look and feel increasingly choreographed, almost like concerts or reality shows. There was more than a ring of truth to an online comedy video that imagines the strategy session for Hillary Clinton’s now-famous trip to an Ohio Chipotle this spring.  

So small wonder some voters in both parties are gravitating to candidates who seem the least scripted. Among Democrats, Bernie Sanders isn’t gaining traction against Clinton by being a polished, attractive alternative, as Barack Obama was in 2008. Instead, the often disheveled-looking Sanders strikes a chord of authenticity in his rambling, funny speeches Clinton could never hope to emulate.

Republicans likely see similar assets in the Donald. Trump’s comments about illegal immigrants from Mexico may rankle his corporate partners and earn him scorn throughout the political world, but they’re so clearly and obviously not focus-grouped. Compared to a campaign whose supporters are literally given scripts from which to read, that has to be refreshing.

Chris Christie could have made good on his boasts about always telling it like it is and being unconstrained by politesse. Instead he made clear that he liked Trump and considered him a friend. That soft crunching sound you heard was the supposedly hard-charging New Jersey governor walking on eggshells.

Rand Paul claims the desire and ability to expand the party’s reach to more minorities. So where’s his takedown of Trump?

Bush has said that a politician must be willing to lose the party’s nomination in order to win the general election, but that philosophy can’t end with his allegiance to the Common Core. It has to include an unblinking acknowledgment of his party’s craziness whenever and wherever it flares…

And while he should be irrelevant, he’s becoming ever more relevant, because he’s exposing their timidity and caution.

Many of my colleagues on the right have taken pains to logic-chop Trump’s remarks. And it is true that some number of rapists and drug dealers are illegally crossing the border. Others have defended Trump by noting that what people like about this Lonesome Rhodes in a $10,000 suit is his fearlessness, bluntly tackling issues that other politicians fear to touch. That is a fine point in an indictment of the professional political class, but it is not a defense of Trump.

His goal was to wave the rhetorical bloody shirt. It worked only too well, damaging a party he expresses contempt for daily…

Meanwhile, too many of Trump’s GOP primary competitors, afraid of angering his fans, stand mute or mumbling. Republicans are fielding the best candidates in a generation, but Trump is poised to make them chumps by association. He has no chance of becoming president, but he has the huge potential to deny his alleged party a White House victory in 2016. And when that happens, he will of course stay a celebrity, but he will have traded his fame for infamy, even among those now cheering him on.

[O]n June 16, Trump announced that he was, in fact, running for president. Since then, CNN has covered Trump more than 400 times on television and on its website, according to the Nexis database. That’s more coverage than CNN has given to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker or any other major GOP candidates. It’s even more coverage than CNN has given to Hillary Clinton…

The dilemma facing CNN is one facing every political media outlet: How much coverage should be given to a notoriously self-aggrandizing business mogul and reality television star who, despite reporters’ contention that he can’t win his party’s nomination, is drawing an enormous audience by offering the media sensational quotes and highly clickable fodder…

“I get it. Trump saying crazy shit is candy, and ‘how do you respond to (fill in the crazy shit Trump said)’ is easy,” one prominent political journalist said. “But let’s be honest about what this is about.”

Mr. Trump has no coherent governing philosophy. All he has is an attitude, and a crude one at that. As his announcement speech and subsequent statements have made clear, his command of the issues is superficial, his presentation often rambling and demagogic.

At the heart of Donald Trump’s candidacy is folie de grandeur. Mr. Trump will build a fence on the southern border — and get Mexico to pay for it. He’s got a “foolproof” plan to defeat the Islamic State “very quickly,” but when asked what it is, he told Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, “I’m not gonna tell you what it is tonight.” He’ll have a “great relationship” with Vladimir V. Putin while also keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. His policy views on China consist mostly of bluster (“Oh, would China be in trouble. The poor Chinese.”). Mr. Trump is eager to tell us that “there’s nobody bigger and better at the military than I am.” He also gets things done “better than anybody.” And he will be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”…

There’s not much that can be done about that. If conservatives rally to defend Mr. Trump on the grounds that he’s “refreshing” and has “passion,” that he’s “anti-establishment” and irritates liberals, they will do considerable damage to their movement and to the Republican Party. Mr. Trump is a pernicious figure on the American political landscape. He can’t be wished away. Which means the people who have to confront and expose him are conservatives. We’re the ones who have the most to lose from a successful Trump candidacy.

Trump is not telling it like it is. That would require some thoughtful analysis. He’s more about telling it like it feels. America has left its borders undefended. America is wobbling on the world stage. America’s economy is sagging under the dead weight of bureaucracy. To many Americans, it feels as if our grip on The Dream is slip-sliding away. There’s real anxiety rumbling out there, and Trump has managed to tap into it, if not with articulation at least with body language. The public — or at least its more anxious element — is responding.

So where does the Trump boomlet go from here? Experience tells us that it will prove to be epiphenomenal. As voters take a closer look at him, they will see more of his warts, which to even a minimally competent oppo-researcher are present in grotesque profusion. More tellingly, the other candidates will begin to address the issues Trump is agitating. And when those more plausible candidates begin to allay the Trump-excited anxieties, voters will exhale, knowing that their concerns are being addressed. Their infatuation with Trump will then wane — my guess is that his campaign will be fading well before the first snow falls. The question will then become: Will he go quietly? Or is he lugging around what gives every appearance of being a third-party-sized ego? Will he play the sore loser, do Hillary still another favor, and try to bust up the game he just lost?

I don’t know, but here’s a suggestion for those of you currently bemused by the Trump candidacy: Ask him now if he will commit to supporting the nominee of the party whose leadership he seeks. If he won’t commit, kick him off the debate stage.

[T]hose who view him as a phony and an opportunist who could tarnish the GOP’s image are starting to sound the alarm. There have even been calls to exclude him from the upcoming GOP debates.

As tempting as it is to join them, the problem, I think, is that it would be perceived as pretty heavy-handed for the RNC or a TV network to unilaterally decide to exclude the guy polling in second place in both national and early state surveys. This would be a slap in the face of the misguided voters who support him, and would likely turn Trump into a martyr. By all means, Republicans should denounce the horrible things he says, but excluding him from the debates would only make matters worse.

What is more, it’s hard to imagine the rationale that would justify his exclusion. It’s probably worth mentioning that, on top of everything else, he’s not really a conservative. But do we want to impose a litmus test? I suppose we could argue that he’s not really a politician, but by that logic, Carly Fiorina (the only woman running) and Dr. Ben Carson (the only African-American) would also be excluded. To be sure, you could argue that Trump’s comments were especially egregious. But being a “jerk” is a relative thing. It’s hard to quantify. Do we want to get in the business of punishing Republican candidates for saying controversial or politically incorrect things — because if we do, Trump won’t be the only one excluded.

As much as I hate to say it, the GOP has to go through this process. It’s likely to be painful; things will probably get worse before they get better.

RUSH:  Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot emphasize enough — by the way, I’m not sucking up. In fact, I’m doing the opposite of sucking up.  I’m not sucking up here.  I can relate is why I know how big a deal this is.  The amount of abuse that Donald Trump has taken, the efforts that have been made to destroy him, the ongoing efforts to harm, damage and, from their perspective, destroy Trump’s businesses, it has been serious.  It has been an onslaught and he has not buckled.  And I’m telling you, whatever you think of Trump and all of this, try to keep that in perspective.

Most people would have buckled long ago.  Most people would have cried uncle and begged forgiveness of the new totalitarians long ago.  I have an incredible amount of admiration and respect for just this aspect of what Trump has done.  I know it seems easy to comprehend this.  But this is one of those things that — well, most people’s reactions, Trump’s rich he can afford it.  No big deal. 

You wait until it happens to you.  Those who have had this happen.  I know some of you have.  Be it the IRS, somebody, your employer, somebody has tried to do real damage.  You know how difficult it is.  In this case, try to imagine the entire country coming after you as represented by the media, and all these giant corporations and their sanctimonious CEOs trying to gain favor with the left and the Democrat Party by joining the hit parade against you, and still hanging in there and not buckling. 

I asked Trump about Ross Perot’s third-party run in 1992, in which Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote. Did Trump believe Perot was a spoiler in that election?

“Totally,” Trump said. “I think every single vote that went to Ross Perot came from [George H.W.] Bush…Virtually every one of his 19 percentage points came from the Republicans. If Ross Perot didn’t run, you have never heard of Bill Clinton.”

In the course of a brief talk, Trump made a strong case for staying in the Republican party. But he left the door ever so slightly cracked at the end, when I asked if he would definitively rule out a third-party run. “It’s something I’m not thinking about right now,” Trump said, “because I’m doing well within the Republican ranks, and that gives us the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.”

Via MFP.