As America’s quadrennial campaign circus heats up, pundits are tearing their hair out wondering how Donald Trump could be leading in the Republican primary polls while being such an a$$hole. I have a theory that (in my humble opinion, at least) makes a lot of sense.  

I’ve lived long enough to have sat thru a lot of presidential campaigns. I’ve witnessed inflammatory speeches by every right-wing nut-job from George Wallace to Pat Buchanan, but never have I so frequently rolled my eyes and sighed, “what an a$$hole!” as I have in reaction to Donald Trump.

Yet every time he says something racist, misogynist, classist, or generally a$$holey, he gets a little bump in the polls. He now seems to have a lock on 25-30% of Republican primary voters. How can this be, when only an a$$hole could support Trump and the insane things he says?

It’s because 25-30% of Republican primary voters are a$$holes. They’re angry, mean, racist, chauvinist and bigoted. These are the people who get all of their “information” from Faux Neus, and when the orange-headed windbag says something insulting, the a$$holes happily swarm around him like flies on a cow pie. Meanwhile, 16 other candidates are competing for the 70-75% of Republican primary voters who aren’t a$$holes.

We’ve all known for a long time that this ugly element exists in the Republican party, but until now it’s been hard to know how big that element is. So we can thank Donald Trump for defining, isolating and quantifying the Republican A$$hole Caucus – a group I like to call “Repugnantans”.

The shrinking sane wing of the party needs to exorcise this malignant cyst from its political body, otherwise it has a very dismal future. I’m not sure if they can, but it sure will be entertaining watching them try.