GOP relieved; all others appalled he was ever taken seriously.

Real estate magnate, beauty pageant creepazoid, Giuliani-playmate, and professional weirdo Donald Trump has released a statement announcing he has changed his mind about running for the Republican nomination for president.

Although he had lined up campaign consultants, repeatedly visited the early primary state of New Hampshire, and even tentatively planned to announce his candidacy on May 25 in the atrium of his own Trump Tower, his poll numbers plunged recently in the wake of President Obama’s release of his long form birth certificate, stripping Trump (not literally, thank God) of his signature issue.

Trump’s appeal to Republican voters, such as it was, was the combination of his celebrity, which gained him massive amounts of earned media airtime no matter what he said, together with his willingness to say anything, no matter what: to make allegations about President Obama that even the fringeiest of the fringey Republican candidates, like Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain, shied away from. He denied that the current commander-in-chief was an American citizen, alleged he had been accepted into Harvard for dubious reasons, called him an affirmative action baby, and more or less embraced anything else suggested to him about the President that sounded bad.

With Trump pushed out of the headlines by the death of Osama bin Laden, his support vanishing as quickly as it arose, and NBC apparently discussing recasting his reality show “The Apprentice,” he has now pulled the plug.

And thus endeth one of the stranger chapters in modern American political history.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Harris Mercer is a new resident of Boulder and a native of New York City. He served as National High School Director with Students for Barack Obama at Obama for America throughout the Democratic presidential primaries in 2007 and 2008. At Bennington College in Bennington, VT he got to study both his obsessions: politics and Shakespeare. He can be reached at harrismercer [at] gmail [dot] com and wants you to go to http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com.

elephant is a discussion, not a lecture: please comment below to continue the conversation with the author.