dons tinfoil hat Imagine you are the Republican Party. You need to make a bunch of candidates look good against Hilary Clinton, the presumed front runner for the Democratic nomination. What do you want to do? You want to make Republican policy look good. You want to silence the critics that will inevitably trot out the "Republicans hate: Minorities, gays, non-Christians, abortion..." list goes on. So instead of waiting for the Democrat soft-money machine to spin up and put all those ideas in the public and force the reaction from all the candidates you stop and think. "What if we got a rich Republican that has access to national airtime and is known for being a bozo so my candidate can differentiate himself from the salacious 'Republican' policies without having to even mention a Democrat. Who do we know that loves the spotlight so much that he is willing to just make an utter ass of himself to make other Republicans look better.....wait! I know a guy." Enter Donald Trump. He isn't a candidate. He is an effigy for Republicans to burn in a misguided attempt to make their candidates seem less ridiculous. Seem more ready when compared to Hillary. To seem slightly less like the awkward collection of not-ready for prime time weirdos they've found so far. removes tinfoil hat
I like your theory. Sadly, not all of the candidates got the memo to burn Trump. Ted Cruz, the Hispanic Tea Party senator from Texas, is team Trump. Granted, he's of Cuban heritage rather than Mexican, but it just seems silly that he'd cheer for an anti-immigration guy when his own dad is an immigrant. I suspect Cruz is just another foil like Trump though. He's not likely to win the nomination, but his presence makes the other contenders look less extreme by comparison. It's like marking up an item's price in a store so that the rip off next to it suddenly looks like a reasonable deal.