In the department of "Until I'm Blue in the Face," again, Donald Trump was not my first, second, or sixteenth choice in the primaries.  But then again, neither was Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, or even George W. Bush (although today I will defend his record more forcefully even than the average Republican).  We have tried innumerable nice guys, economic illiterates, and conventional politicians.  We're done.  We're at the brink.  We've lost our jobs and our businesses.  We are witnessing a federal government including an IRS, an EPA, an FEC, FCC, SEC, FBI, and Supreme Court shot through with corruption. We are choking on taxes, regulations, bureaucracy, socialist schemes, crime, Islamic terrorism, and political correctness.  We are irrevocably losing our country.  And we are not standing for it.

That is why we nominated a garish, vulgar boor.  Not because he is a garish, vulgar boor, but because he is a fighting alpha male who doesn't take any crap, who dishes it back out as hard as he is attacked.  Who, while he may lack policy sophistication, understands the angst and anguish of the American people in a way that the intelligentsia even of the Republican Party cannot, and authentically empathizes.  He is raw and real.

Who in the Republican camp, in the face of the Hillary attack machine, still regrets that we didn't nominate Jeb Bush?  Do you imagine that the personal attacks on Bush would be tame and manageable because he's (presumably) a Boy Scout?  The Mormon choirboy Mitt couldn't stand up to the withering assaults on his character.

Trump's threat in the second debate to prosecute Hillary and his comment that she belongs in jail are perfect examples of how Trump has turned the tables on convention, on political correctness, and on the progressive enemies of America.  The Democrats have gotten away with outrageous corruption precisely because it is so outrageous that to call it out publicly to the average uninformed voter is to risk being seen as a complete off-the-charts nutjob.  Nobody can imagine that mainstream politicians and public servants could be so evil – not in America!  Democrats count on Republicans being too polite or too intimidated to say such things.  In the breach, Democrats count on other Democrats, known collectively as the media, to publicly heap burning coals on the head of any Republicans courageous or stupid enough to cross the line.

But the Democrats and the media have met their match in Trump.  He is the most media-savvy candidate, the greatest communicator since Ronald Reagan, and utterly unafraid.

A political gaffe is defined as an inadvertent letting slip of an embarrassing truth.  Trump's comments are anti-gaffes – truths that are so shocking (but true) that the Democrat machine counts on nobody daring to utter them, deliberately and unapologetically.  But because the American people have caught on to the lies, they are starving for a leader with the guts to say what they know is true.  Jeb didn't and probably never would.  Trump did, does, and will.  That's why he is the legitimate candidate, and why establishment Republican buyer's remorse is a crock.  He has exposed the lies as no other Republican has been willing or able, has pulled back the curtain.  One might say he has exposed that the empress has no clothes, but the image is too revolting to contemplate.