The spotlight is shining on Donald Trump right now, but nine other GOP presidential candidates are poised and eager to seize it from him as they head into Thursday night’s prime-time debate in Cleveland…

“My sort of my whole life has been a debate, but I have never debated before,” he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly…

“These politicians, all they do is debate,” he told Fox News, saying he’s “not really” rehearsing. 

“I think you have to be yourself,” Trump said. 

“Trump doesn’t rehearse,” a senior Trump advisor said today.

It’s not that his political team hasn’t tried. Trump’s aides have prepared him memos on the issues and the expected lines of questions and potential attacks from the other candidates, but there have been no formal debate prep sessions, no mock Q & A, no practice debates.

“I have no idea what to expect,” a senior Trump advisor told me. “I’m just as clueless as you about what he’ll do.”

Mr. Trump’s popularity — his support in some polls is now double that of his closest competitors — is built on his unfettered style, rather than on his positions, which have proved highly fungible.

He may be the first post-policy candidate…

[M]any of Mr. Trump’s positions have an improvisational air, shifting in their specifics as he seems to dream them up or reconsider them on the fly and out loud, in free-associative speeches or shoot-from-the-hip interviews…

“Everybody in the establishment misunderstands the game he’s playing,” said Newt Gingrich, the author of the Contract With America and onetime House speaker who was himself a Republican presidential candidate in 2012. “His opponents want to talk about policies. He’s saying if you don’t have a leader capable of cutting through the baloney, all this policy stuff is an excuse for inaction.”

There is a deep economic anxiety driving Republican voters toward the blunt-spoken presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. It is more than just anger at the political class or rebellion against political correctness. It reflects decades of lost jobs and falling wages for a swath of blue-collar Americans, who saw their opportunities diminish and developed a sense that someone has stolen something from them…

Trump is selling an economic message that unifies growing concerns among liberals and conservatives alike, “which is that growing GDP doesn’t necessarily help people on the bottom,” said Mickey Kaus, the author of the Kausfiles blog, who writes frequently and critically about the effects of illegal immigration on the U.S. economy. “Immigration may grow GDP, but I don’t see how it helps workers who (immigrants) compete with, and the people competing don’t see that, either.”…

As a billionaire, and a political outsider, Trump may have more ability to connect with those “anti-foreign” voters, as Caplan calls them, because he isn’t afraid of being judged by other political elites…

Trump supporters say it’s even more than that. Many of them loathe political elites, especially leading Republicans, whom they accuse of breaking promises to secure the border and boost American workers. Trump loves to make fun of those elites, the activists in Rappahannock County said, and they love him for it.

Polling data reveal that Trump supporters are more likely to be male, white, older, with less education—but they are not more likely to be right-wing…

Tea Party voters prefer Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (24 percent) to Trump (14 percent). In contrast, Republicans overall favor Trump first (19 percent) followed by Walker (17 percent), according to a PPP poll. Furthermore, Trump does about as well among moderate Republicans as he does among very conservative Republicans (see ABC/WashPo and PPP polls.) If the right wing were bolstering Trump’s candidacy, then we’d expect him to garner greater support among the “very conservative” ranks.

Despite the hype over Trump’s recent polling surge, he still has not consistently exceeded much beyond 20 percent in recent polls of Republican voters. Furthermore, a majority (54 percent) of Republicans say Trump does not represent the “core values of the Republican Party,” according to ABC/WashPo. Republicans tend to either love or hate Trump, a recipe that could make it difficult for him to secure the GOP nomination for president…

Trump may continue to ascend; however, he may also go the way of Sarah Palin unless he can convince Republicans he has serious, and palatable, policy proposals. Palin deeply connected with a great deal of voters, particularly tea party voters. However, once it became clear that she would not win a general election for president, even her most ardent defenders withdrew their support.

[A] new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows … negative feelings toward Trump are most intense among precisely the groups that Republicans are struggling most to attract: Millennials, black and Hispanic voters, and professionals with advanced degrees…

The scary scenario for Republicans, then, is that come Thursday night, Americans will make the same category shift as the Q Scores Company—that the Fox News debate will serve, in essence, as Donald Trump’s political bar mitzvah, the moment when he becomes a “Republican” in voters’ eyes, with all the positives and negatives that implies for his party…

“If you look at the whole Republican Party, from libertarians to evangelicals to the Tea Party,” says Steele, “you have a group of people who’ve been lied to for 35 years. Republican [presidential candidates] have said, ‘Elect us and we’ll do these things.’ Well, they haven’t. And that frustration is manifesting itself in Trump.”

For a party that has tried, and mostly failed, to recast itself as more positive and inclusive since Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, Trump’s performance on Thursday could be an important determinant of whether that vision is still feasible. “I think we should all sit back and enjoy the show,” says Feehery. The danger for Republicans is that millions of people will—and Trump won’t disappointment them. 

Republicans are in a funk on the eve of the first presidential-primary debate. The party’s popularity has dipped, largely because Republican voters are souring on it. Their lack of confidence in their party surely has something to do with Donald Trump’s rise in the polls. Bitterness between conservative groups and the Senate Republican leadership is at a peak, with the former saying the latter are too devoted to keeping corporate welfare programs like the Export-Import Bank alive and insufficiently committed to defunding Planned Parenthood.

The party’s low morale is partly the result of two strategic decisions its leaders have made over the past year. They chose to run an agenda-less campaign to win control of the Senate in 2014, and having won it they chose to act as though their most important goal was to “prove they could govern” — that is, to enact legislation or at least get it to President Barack Obama to sign or veto…

These potential drawbacks to the strategy have largely materialized. Conservatives and swing voters who are paying attention have seen the Republican Congress act on business priorities: advancing a highway bill and getting a Trade Promotion Authority signed by the president. They have also seen them fret for months about the possibility that the Supreme Court would force them to do something about Obamacare, something Republican voters actually want, and then breathe sighs of relief that it didn’t…

It isn’t surprising, then, that roughly a fifth of Republican voters are flocking to Trump, a candidate who promises big, not-terribly-specific changes — but seems like he might mean it.

We’re at a unique moment in American politics, in which politicians have become more like actors, reciting the lines their political handlers give them, running in a trivial 24-7 media culture where any gaffe, however minor, is often treated like a seismic catastrophe. It’s made politicians much less relatable and less popular (most politicians have upside-down favorability in national polling), and increased the level of cynicism among the press and paranoia among campaign operatives. Combine that with the anger many voters feel towards the political class, and there’s a yuuuge opening for any politician who connects with people and appears genuine—even if voters don’t agree with all their positions on issues. (Just look at this week’s Bloomberg poll, showing Trump not only winning support from the Republican Party’s populist wing but leading among women, affluent voters, those under 45, and voters with a college degree. This isn’t only about his anti-immigration rhetoric; it’s about his uncanny ability to generate nonstop news coverage through his antics.)

This is America’s moment of authenticity. It’s why every GOP candidate, from Ted Cruz to Rand Paul to Lindsey Graham, is rushing to perform silly stunts—putting a cell phone in a blender, destroying the tax code with a chainsaw, and making “machine-gun bacon”—to demonstrate they’ve got some personality. President Obama himself accelerated the trend, proving his coolness by selling his agenda with comedian Zach Galifianakis on Between Two Ferns and with YouTube sensation GloZell.

Trump is the clearest example of this phenomenon. The celebrity business mogul is brash and offensive. Even though he has taken positions that would be toxic both in a GOP primary (past support for single-payer health care, backing abortion rights) and a general election (calling illegal immigrants from Mexico “rapists,” and mocking John McCain for being held as a prisoner of war), he has surged into first place in most national and early-state primary polls. Many Republican voters don’t care about his obvious lack of policy positions. As they see it, he’s speaking truth to power. One telling Bloomberg-sponsored New Hampshire focus group, filled with Trump admirers, said they liked his bluntness, admired his business success, and argued his strong persona is exactly what Washington needs.

For those now supporting Trump—and they are a minority of a minority as of now—his nascent campaign seems to be acting as the Ventura campaign and the California recall did: providing a mechanism to turn a fever of disaffection into action. And from that sense of possibility, the chance to redefine what political plausibility means, comes an overt, enthusiastic rejection of the “norms” of politics. Does he flaunt his wealth? Then he doesn’t have to suck up to rich, powerful influence-buyers. Does he hurl insults left, right and center? Like the Minnesotan said about Jesse Ventura, “I don’t put up with a lot of stuff, and neither does he.” In fact, most of us have to put with a lot of stuff—from bosses, bureaucrats, family—which makes Trump an object of admiration, for his ability to tell pretty much everyone to go to hell). Does he blatantly contradict his past views? Hell, every politician lies, or tells us what the think we want to hear. He’s smart enough not to take all that stuff seriously. If all of his fellow candidates disowned him, if established conservative voices tried to read him out of the movement, as William Buckley did to the John Birch Society, it would only be proof that they are resistant to an honest outsider. If a modern day equivalent of Joseph Welch asked Trump, as Welch did of Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” Trump would likely respond, “I don’t need any lectures from a stuffed shirt wrinkled old geezer!” And his backers would cheer him on.

That’s why fellow billionaire and TV reality star Mark Cuban was dead on when he said: “I don’t care what his actual positions are…I don’t care if he says the wrong thing. He says what’s on his mind. He gives honest answers rather than prepared answers. This is more important than anything any candidate has done in years.”

The gambler in me still says that Trump falls to earth—maybe with a crash by virtue of his own hand (or mouth) or with a slow fade to the margins. All I mean to do here is to note that there are times in politics when the Black Swan shows up; when a highly unlikely, highly improbable event shatters years worth of assumptions; when voters see—and then grasp—an audacious possibility. Before offering up any certainties about what might happen to Trump, it might be useful to use a tool that Trump himself has never employed: humility.

DONALD TRUMP: Honestly I have to do it. We have to make America great again and this is part of the process you have to go through. It’s not something I longed for, it’s not something I look forward to being exposed like that, but hey, look I went to the best schools. I was a very good student. I made a tremendous fortune which I guess tells something, you know, between The Apprentice and The Art of the Deal and all the books, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, but again debating is not something – I guess my whole life is a debate when you get right down to it, but it’s not something that I do professionally and these guys do it professionally, but I think we’ll do just fine.

I am. I want to set it as low as possible. I want to set that bar so low. I want to set that bar so low you have no idea, but we’ll see what happens.