"....Suddenly, They Realized They Had Been Duped....And....They Voted For The Guy Anyway...."

The iconic logo of the Republican party is an elephant.

Turns out that's one of the greatest ironies of all time this time around.



Tara Setmayer is former communications director for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, and a CNN political commentator. Follow her on Twitter @tarasetmayer. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author

Imagine if every GOP debate had been like the one Thursday night. Policy heavy, insult light and providing voters with a contrast between the candidates over level of knowledge on issues. It was clear that each candidate had shifted tactics from the last dumpster fire of a debate.

After Sen. Marco Rubio's mudslinging with Donald Trump hurt his campaign, he decided to return to his above-the-fray, aspirational tone. Sen. Ted Cruz avoided the schoolyard back and forth with Trump as well, but still managed to hit him on specific policy differences. Gov. John Kasich was...well, Kasich. 

For his part, Trump showed no signs of the thin-skinned, petulant reality show star we've become accustomed to throughout this campaign. No bluster. No insults. But also no energy. And no real policy knowledge. 

How different would the campaign be at this point if this Donald Trump had shown up from the beginning? Imagine if the tabloid antics and outlandish behavior never happened. Imagine if Trump's positions and record were actually vetted? Would this Trump have been as popular or capable of building his cult of personality without the shtick? I think not. 

If this election had been about policy, not personality, from the beginning, Donald Trump wouldn't have made it past the first primary. At Thursday's debate, both Rubio and Cruz effectively exposed 

Trump's unworkable position on trade and his lack of substance on major foreign policy issues. 

This wasn't the first time Trump was made to look foolish on important foreign policy questions. 

Who can forget his utter incoherence when asked about the nuclear triad a few debates back.

What made this debate different was Trump's inability to hide behind his usual obnoxious bullying tactics to distract from his ignorance. He appeared to be trying to tone things down, I assume to prove to detractors that he does have the temperament to be President. But he left himself exposed as the policy neophyte that he actually is. Pithy catchphrases does not a foreign policy make. 

Trump looked uncomfortable. When challenged on substance, he consistently pivoted back to his talking points about making "great deals." While Rubio and Cruz spelled out policy positions -- on, for example, Cuba and Israel -- Trump showed that he was out of his league on topics that a President should be well versed in.

He utterly flubbed his explanation for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin and calling the brutal communist Chinese government's massacre at Tiananmen Square massacre "strong," by arguing the meaning of the word. It recalled the infamous Bill Clintonesque answer of "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." 

Over the last few weeks, Trump's opponents have been hitting him hard on his "flexibility" on key stances he's built his campaign on. From his hardline on immigration to tough talk on torture, Trump often speaks out of both sides of his mouth. Yet, the most telling moment of the night came when Trump was asked what else he would be flexible on and he replied, "you never know." Is that so?

Here is the crux of what so many have cautioned Trump supporters about. Trump is a political chameleon capable of changing his positions based on what he thinks best suits him politically at any moment. Trump's answer Thursday night showed his candidacy to be purely cosmetic, not one of honest conviction. This should be worrisome to the supporters who think they are getting one thing when they may really be getting something else. 

Isn't that exactly what has fueled the groundswell of anger at the politicians in Washington? A major part of Trump's appeal is that he portrays himself as an outsider. But is he really? As Carly Fiorina so aptly pointed out, how can Trump reform "the system" when he's admittedly been a part of it?

Although Cruz and Rubio had solid performances, it may be too little too late to change Trump's trajectory.

Trump is a master at manipulating people to buy what he's selling. But this time it's not his steaks or mortgages or real estate classes. It's the presidency of the United States, and once they've realized they've been had, the American people cannot join a class action lawsuit to ask for their money back. 

First, and admittedly absolutely lacking any sense of impartiality, I'll fess up and say that I not only agree with everything Ms. Setmayer has to offer here, but I find it personally refreshing to finally come across a morning after essay that avoids partisan sniping, agenda furthering snarkiness and simply describes the state of things when it comes to election 2016.

There are, though, two observations of Tara's, in particular, that keep lighting up among the others for me, in that way that Beautiful Mind guy was always seeing equations and star patterns.

"....Trump...... showed his candidacy to be purely cosmetic, not one of honest conviction. This should be worrisome to the supporters who think they are getting one thing when they may really be getting something else. ..."

"...it may be too little too late to change Trump's trajectory...."

My dues paid up to date lifetime membership in the American League Of Political Cynics acknowledged and taken into account, here's how it shakes out for me at this moment in the melee'.

It is, in fact, too little too late to change Trump's trajectory.

And the reason for that is that it won't be worrisome to the supporters who think they are getting one thing when they may really be getting something else.

Ms.Setmayer's take, as accurate and unbiased as I personally believe it to be, still, surely inadvertently, gets tripped up by not taking into account a couple of dynamics in play in this particular election that have never been in play in an election before.

Common sense is out the window.

And "we, the people" have never been more vulnerable, or potentially fatally blind, to the charms of  "... a master at manipulating people to buy what he's selling...".

Every cogent, articulate piece about Trump and his rise written by someone like Ms. Setmayer, can't help but, at most, pivot back to or, at the very least, be lightly sprinkled with, the spoken or unspoken notion that, in the end, when it counts, the fog will lift, the obvious will once again be obvious and the runaway Trump train will either derail or come to a screeching halt as people finally come to their senses.

Common sense dictates that people will come to their senses.

At which point, I respectfully refer you back to the first of the two aforementioned dynamics in play.

It's as if a large and growing portion of the population was under some kind of spell, as if Trump was not so much a interloper as an illusionist, bedazzling a usually level headed group of townsfolk into a blissful, but treacherous, state of euphoria about how he would make all their troubles go away...by simply making America great again.

Professor Harold Hill selling a candidacy instead of clarinets.

And, in that scenario, the plot would eventually, even mercifully, reach the exciting climax where that usually level headed group of townsfolk would, either as the result of a good talkin' to, or a fair sized smack up side the head, be snapped back into reality, suddenly aware of the huckster in their midst, a little embarrassed about the ease with which they were seduced, but now clear eyed, clear headed and ready to get back to the business of choosing a fellow level head to lead them.

Tara Setmayer's work here is a sharp, insightful and spot on example of a good talkin' to.

And any usually level headed group of townsfolk would likely need nothing more to bring them back to that reality.

But all of this assumes, compassionately, that the applicable townsfolk were a level headed group in the first place.

As opposed to a group of townsfolk who live on a steady diet of junk food and reality TV programming, who hate Congress with a passion but seldom hesitate to put the same representative right back in the same seat in that Congress, who faithfully fill the pews on Sunday morning to praise Jesus and his teachings and then spend Monday through Saturday talking and/or posting vicious and venomous diatribes in the direction of a black man and his family who have made history and whose worst, most egregious, provable failing, in the townsfolk's eyes, is that they are black and they've made history, who listen to and admire the nonsensical, even bizarre demagoguery of faux leaders like Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin while seeing no hypocrisy at all in the promiscuity and out of wedlock antics of Sarah's oldest.

A group of townsfolk who don't know the name of the Vice President of the United States but can tell you, in a flash, who is, and where you would find, Snooki, who likely haven't even accidentally remote controlled across PBS in the last fifty years, if at all, but never miss a single, mind numbing minute of "Keeping Up With The Kardashians"....who don't know the difference between 'for" and "fore", "to" and "too" or "your" and "you're" but are experts on a galactic scale on pretty much every subject known to mankind, at least the mankind that exhibits itself daily on social media.

The last minute "awakening" of "the American people" in the election year 2016 depends entirely on how asleep they were in the first place.

As opposed to simply how uneducated, uninformed, unenlightened, unsophisticated, unwilling and/or unreasonable while fully and completely awake.

The unkind word to use would be "stupor".

But that's why the logo is both iconic and ironic this time around.

Stupor is the elephant in the room.