Derailing the Donald getting quite remote

AS THE Republican and Democratic presidential candidates were preparing for the crucial presidential primaries on March 15 - aka Super-Tuesday II - much of the attention of the media focused on the violence that was erupting during the campaign.

In particular, the leading cable television news networks kept broadcasting scenes from Donald Trump's large rallies during which the brash New Yorker responded to demonstrators who interrupted his addresses, by ordering security to "get 'em out of here", expressing his desire to "punch in the face" this "trouble-maker" or that "thug", and pledging to pay the legal fees of one of his supporters who punched an anti-Trump protester and then threatened to kill him. At the same time, one of the Donald's top aides was accused of manhandling a female reporter.

So it was perhaps not surprising that once again - and who is counting - the pundits and the political pros expressed their confidence that Republican voters were about to turn against the Republican front-runner, that they would blame Mr Trump for creating, through his actions and words, an explosive political environment where violence was becoming inevitable, and that most important, that they would punish him in the crucial primaries in Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and North Carolina.