Let's face it, almost no one expects Donald Trump to become the Republican party's nominee, and even fewer people expect him to win the Presidency. Despite Trump's current high polling numbers, the "conventional wisdom" seems accurate; no one ever became President of the United States by controlling 30% of a single political party while being almost universally detested by everyone else.
It has also been oft-joked and seriously postulated that Donald Trump is in some way helping the Democrats (whether intentionally or otherwise) by making a Democratic nominee look more reasonable than voting Republican in 2016.
Let's entertain the possibility that thinking Donald Trump is more helpful to Democrats than Republicans is catastrophically wrong; or at least short-sighted.
A lot of this conventional thinking is born from the assumption that if Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, his history of racism and elitism will hand the election on a silver platter to whomever the Democrats nominate. This early in the election season, it's understandable to see such a variable spread of Republican candidates and assume he can make it that far, but that fear sounds too reminiscent of the terror so many experienced when Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll four years ago.
More of this thinking is born from the idea that Trump's comments are so nativist, so racist, so fascist, so reprehensible, that he will do lasting damage to the Republican brand. This hearkens back to the 2012 GOP primary, where every single candidate got dragged through the muck in what was affectionately called a "clown car" and more accurately dubbed a "circular firing squad." Still, the Republican philosophies of tax cuts and deregulation for all doesn't seem to be threatened here, the only thing voters seem to universally revile is Donald Trump himself.
Rather than speculate on Trump's motives, it's worth asking the question, "what kind of environment will the inevitable post-Trump primary landscape look like?" His existence in the primary race so far has helped or hindered candidates on a person-by-person basis. The assumed safe bets of the Bush and Walker campaigns were all but obliterated once the debate schedule started running...Walker's campaign was high on cash but short on substance, while Jeb's decision to engage in back-and-forth bickering with Donald has been a colossal failure.
This is not the case for some other Republican candidates. Thanks to the excess of media attention given to Donald Trump and his increasingly bombastic rhetoric, almost no one noticed the soft-spoken incompetence of Ben Carson for months. People have all but forgotten how universally reviled Ted Cruz was two years ago coming off his self-indulgent crusade to de-fund the Affordable Care Act, or how malleable Marco Rubio's positions have been since being elected to the Senate. With all the attention on Trump, Carly Fiorina has more or less been given carte blanche to treat every debate stage as a fact-free zone.
Not only do these other candidates benefit from such a lack of scrutiny, Trump's objectively bigoted remarks provide them with the opportunity to legitimize their own candidacies by comparison. Compared to Donald Trump, Marco Rubio has all the appearance of reason that Bill Clinton's "Third-Way" centrism was so famous for...despite standing to the right of even Ronald Reagan on most policy issues.
When the Trump bubble bursts, and burst it will, the Republican primary will likely be decided quickly, among candidates that the media and public have not fully vetted. It's entirely possible that the Republican nominee will emerge from the primary race almost unscathed and without having been thoroughly scrutinized. Whether that's good for the Democrats is too soon to say, but it's definitely good for the current Republican candidates.
The ones whose campaigns Trump hasn't personally destroyed already, that is.
