Donald Trump is offensive, but far from unique in U.S. presidential races

Former Surrey councillor Dalton Jones, who's been around the block a few times, has a great expression about the United States. He calls it the "Excited States of America." This applies most particularly to its politics.
In U.S. politics, nothing is more closely watched than the protracted, convoluted and messy job of picking candidates for president. This process is always at its messiest when a president is nearing the end of his second term, and the office is wide open.
However, the utterances by Donald Trump, one of more than a dozen candidates in the running for the Republican nomination, take the phrase "Excited States" to a whole new level.
Trump, a multi-billionaire real estate developer with an outsized personality, has already smeared most Mexicans, and Americans of Mexican origin, by suggesting that most of them are rapists, drug dealers, criminals and miscreants of other persuasions. He did allow that a few might be alright, saying "some, I assume, are good people."
When pressed on these comments, he just dug in deeper. Apologies do not come from his lips.
This attack on Mexicans, and by extension on immigrants from all corners of the world, has played well with a certain portion of the Republican "base." Of course there are anti-immigration sentiments in the United States - there are everywhere, including Canada. However, the actual number of people who, when pressed, are against all immigration is exceedingly low.
That's because the U.S., Canada and most European countries absolutely need immigrants to make their economies function properly. This is particularly true in the U.S. and Canada, but in the U.S., too many of the immigrants doing essential jobs such as picking fruit, servicing tourists and working in meat packing plants are in the country illegally, because the government has been unable and unwilling to modernize its immigration rules.
Trump's standing in the polls of Republican hopefuls has shot up since his remarks on Mexicans. He repeated those remarks at a large rally in Arizona. Arizona has been deeply divided on immigration issues, as it is one of the states that is "ground zero," having to deal firsthand with thousands of illegal entries from Mexico each year.
His remarks were condemned by Senator John McCain, the senior U.S. senator from Arizona and 2008 Republican candidate for president. McCain is a moderate on immigration issues and has made numerous suggestions over the years which could help ease some illegal immigration problems.
That may have been why Trump tore into McCain at a forum for Republican hopefuls in Ames, Iowa on Saturday. He said that McCain, who spent almost six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam after his  plane was shot down in 1967, was not a war hero. His exact remarks: "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who were not captured."
For much of the time McCain was in prison, Trump was partying it up in Manhattan, as pointed out in an excellent article in the Washington Post.
He has refused to apologize to McCain and other prisoners of war, and predictably, his poll numbers have gone up.
What does all this mean? To use Jones' excellent phrase as a guide, some people in the U.S. are excited about Trump because he "says it as it is." He appeals to their baser instincts. This type of political appeal is not confined to the U.S. - it happens in many countries with democratic systems of government.
Because of the crowded Republican field, Trump is trying to stand out, and it's working. He already has a showboat style, as seen on numerous TV programs, and even if he never wins the nomination or runs for president, he has boosted the Trump "brand," which is his ultimate goal. After all, a Trump Tower is under construction in Vancouver right now. There has been no substantive effort to rename it.
In his own way, Donald Trump is like Kim Kardashian. He's famous for being famous, and everything he does is about the brand.
To the best of my recollection, there has not been as broadly offensive a candidate for the presidential nomination of a mainstream political party since George Wallace was seeking the Democratic nomination in 1964, 1972 and 1976. Wallace ran as a third party candidate in 1968, and won five southern states and collected more than 10 million votes.
Donald Trump is no George Wallace. However, he is exceptionally ambitious and is very well-known for many reasons. Most Americans have had him in their homes on their TV sets, and feel they know something about him.
He won't win the Republican nomination. However, it is very possible that, like Wallace, he will be a third-party candidate for president in 2016 and will be a very significant factor in determining the final outcome, just as Ross Perot was in 1992, and Teddy Roosevelt was in 1912.
The excitement is just beginning.