August is arriving, and we are entering week six of Donald Trump's rise—first into the double digits, now into first place—in the national polls for the Republican presidential primary race. While there are few if any experienced GOP pros or political reporters who think Trump can actually win the nomination, it's hard to argue with where he is right now. Even after his unfortunate remark questioning the heroism of Sen. John McCain—who was held captive and tortured for five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp while Trump cooled his heels stateside on one draft deferment after another (student, then medical)—the bombastic real-estate mogul remains at the head of the Republican pack. The fact that Trump's very conservative, anti-immigration, militantly anti-establishment, and—most important—angry backers never cared much for the independent and sometimes-moderate McCain helps to explain why the comment had so little effect on the businessman's poll numbers. But the McCain incident also suggests that, while Trump's candidacy is almost certainly destined to fail, he is less likely to pop like a balloon than to deflate gradually,

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