“Would Americans actually vote a reality television billionaire into the White House?” mused Christopher Ingraham recently in The Washington Post. This would have been a stupid question six months ago but with billionaire Donald Trump surging ahead in the Republican (GOP) nomination race, the odds are long but not impossible. Conservative commentators, though, have dismissed his frontrunner status as a case of the pre-fight yips among jaded GOP voters. After all, come 2016, they will likely run into a rampant Clinton machine propped up by President Obama’s surprisingly robust second-term approval ratings. GOP leaders expect Trump to crash and burn when the party vote bank sobers up. They hope that happens soon. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, also a former GOP member of Congress, however, sees a lot more substance to Trump’s appeal. He believes: “The longer Trump’s opponents play it safe, the longer Trump will continue his political ascent.” Also, the Republican ‘clown car’ of over a dozen candidates does not have the wait-and-see luxury of old. National survey results are crucial this year, since only the top 10 will participate in the first round of GOP debates in August. Trump’s meteoric rise has been shaped by two glaring problems within the GOP. One, it has a stable of vanilla candidates without personalities. Some are old-money inheritances like Jeb Bush, while others like Ted Cruz represent the rudderless Tea Party caucus. Young gun Marco Rubio tries hard to sound hip with pop culture references but openly opposes progressive planks. Moreover, almost everyone is a career politician at a time when 72 percent US citizens disapprove of the GOP-led Congress. Two, the average Republican voter is angry. A recent Pew poll revealed that 55 percent of GOP voters consider their party’s stewardship of Congress a disaster. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is seen as moxie personified: a self-made success story who could blindside Hillary Clinton with his no-holds-barred straight talk. GOP voters have also realised that regular politicking may not be enough to dislodge the Democrats from the White House, especially since Clinton will be another ‘historic candidate’ like Obama, and Republicans have not had much luck beating those recently.Although Scarborough thinks his antics are “unforced errors”, campaign-trail Trump is absolutely more animated than his reality television avatar. Trump’s current cartoon-like demeanour and incendiary sound-bites seem scripted and calculated. He is too smart to pick fights with people unless the distance plays to his advantage. Burning bridges willy nilly is always bad for business, especially his $ 10 billion one.Still, Trump has slighted two GOP sacred cows — John McCain and Lindsey Graham — without reason, and has hinted that Hispanic immigrants are rapists and criminals. Conventional political wisdom holds that voter backlash should quickly kick him to the curb, yet he is still there and gaining traction. GOP voters seem to want an adrenaline rush like the Tea Party movement of 2010 that pried the House of Representatives away from Democratic hands. So far, nobody is convinced that party favourites Jeb Bush or Scott Walker have it in them to deliver this fix. Also, unlike GOP dark horses of elections past, Donald Trump has the distinct advantage of being a household name but without the political baggage of Washington insiders. For a society obsessed with wealth creation, his life story is the very definition of the ‘American dream’. This is why the GOP establishment must truly dread Trump running as a third-party candidate in 2016. If he is snubbed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), Trump has the money to bankroll an independent campaign, and enough voter interest to place better than progressive democrat Ralph Nader did in 2000. Nader, coincidentally, sank Al Gore in that year’s presidential election by diverting left-wing votes in Florida and New Hampshire. If the national race gets tight, Trump could become Clinton’s kingmaker.Donald Trump does have an Achilles heel that comes with speaking his mind too often. In the past, he has expressed his admiration for both the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2004, “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” Three years later, to the same gentleman, he praised Clinton’s foreign policy chops and said, “Hillary would do a good job” as president. Come the first GOP debate, Trump’s rivals will, without a doubt, hammer home the notion of his being an enemy sympathiser.If President Obama has taught presidential hopefuls anything, it is that being relatable rings with the social media generation. In a cult of personality contest like the race for the US president, and especially with its stodgy image, the GOP will struggle to beat Hillary Clinton without a candidate that excites the main street. Right now, for better or worse, Donald Trump is it. The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad