Jonathan Martin on What Trump Must Achieve Tonight

     I think this whole exercise misses the point on Trump who doesn't play by any of the usual rules in a campaign but the general gist is that Trump has to make himself look like a serious, Presidential candidate-though it seems to me that Trump's whole appeal is that's not what he is:

   "Jonathan Martin looks at what the GOP candidates must accomplish at tonight’s debate. Donald Trump’s imperative:"

   "Even a positively huge coat of Teflon will not protect Mr. Trump from an eventual need to show that he is presidential material. He has proved…that he can channel the anger some grass-roots Republicans feel toward party leaders as well as their dismay about what they see as America’s decline. Thursday’s debate…will help determine if Mr. Trump can…demonstrate that he has the vision and temperament to turn those raw emotions into a movement. This will require him to act more like a president than a performance artist."

  "But can Trump manage this transition without losing his aura as someone willing to disrupt conventional politics, which (we’re told) is the source of his appeal?"

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/06/morning-plum-what-top-dems-are-watching-for-at-tonights-gop-debate/

  I tend to say no, he can't and that if he's smart he won't try to. Here's another preduction on what he will in fact do:

 "WHAT TRUMP WILL ACTUALLY DO TONIGHT: Jonathan Karltalks to Trump’s aides and finds that even they have no idea what to expect:

  “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.”

   "And this is the GOP frontrunner we’re talking about here…"

   Agreed. We really have no sense of how he's going to play it-even his advisers don't know. 

    It will be interesting to see how Jeb plays it tonight:

    "Glenn Thrush and Alex Isenstadt have a deeply reported look at how Republicans are dealing with Trump-palooza, including this private Jeb Bush moment:

  “Seriously, what’s this guy’s problem?” he asked one party donor he ran into recently according to accounts provided by several sources close to Bush — and he went on to describe the publicity seeking real estate developer now surging in public polls far ahead of Bush and all the 15 others in the Republican field as “a buffoon,” “clown” and “asshole.”

   "That’s nice. But will Jeb call out Trump’s vow to deport all undocumented immigrants for the insanity that it is?"

    Finally what about the Kiddie Table?

    "There will be also be a debate between the “second tier” candidates, which many are calling the “kiddie table” debate. Matt Lewis says it might get more attention than we expect:

    "It’s entirely possible that the narrative will be that the earlier debate was actually better. For one thing, you’ve got some serious candidates (Perry, Santorum, Jindal, Fiorina, et al.) who will be in this earlier scrum. These are formidable candidates. What if the big debate turns into a mess (thanks to Donald Trump), but the first debate is conversely serious and high-minded?"

    "It’s possible. But will a “serious” debate do the “kiddie table” candidates any good in a media environment that has devolved into a 24-hour Trump-a-thon?"

     This is all the more reason to be grateful to Trump if it obscures the high-minded rhetoric of Perr, Santorum and Jindal.