$1.5 billion poll tab forces Donald Trump to serenade GOP moneybags

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump is reaching out to the Republican establishment after trashing it in the belief that he could win the election on his own steam with his own money. But the $ 1.5 billion tab that is staring him the face -money he estimates is needed to run his campaign till November 8 election -has had a sobering effect on what critics describe as a narcissistic frontrunner. On Tuesday, Trump was smoking the peace pipe after his slashand-burn, take-no-prisoners approach over the past several days had dissed many party grandees and moneybags.

Although Trump boasts of being a billionaire (estimated wealth $4.3 billion) able to fund his own campaign, he has spend only about $40 million of his fortune so far (much of which he has "loaned" his campaign). He has thrived on the oxygen of free publicity (much to the dismay of President Obama who has ticked off the media for giving him more exposure than doing exposes).

But with the nomination virtually lock virtually locked up, Trump now needs the party machinery and its coffers to not just p bring in campaign lolly but also c rally the party base. The maverick candidate is b scheduled to meet House Speacker Paul Ryan on Thursday in a h much-watched development n that will show whether the insurgent and the establishment can reconcile their differences. Left to their own devices both have the capacity to damage each other. Not backing Trump could cost many Republican lawmakers their seats (435 Ho use seats and 34 Senate seats will go to the polls alongside the Presidential Presidential elections); condversely, not having the support of the lawmakers could cost Trump presidential votes although the frontrunner has bragged that his brilliance and charisma will suffice to drive him to the White House. Who needs whom more is debatable, but being united is expected to benefit both sides. But many Republicans loath Trump so much that reconciliation is out of question.

"Truth be told, the character issues with Trump are so enormous (dishonesty , bigotry, misogyny , lack of impulse control, etc.) that there are many conservatives who will never accept him," the right wing pundit Jennifer Rubin wrote on Tuesday , calling for a third candidate, a conservative who can offer a different agenda from Trump and Clinton.

But by most accounts, it is too late for a third or third party candidate to enter the race at this point, although one can still segue into the campaign of many marginal fringe elements who are on the ballot without as much as creating a ripple (John Anderson, a Republican who ran as a third party candidate late in the 1980 election, took this route).

Some GOP backroom pundits are still searching for such a third-person option to upstage Trump. Most polls currently show that Hillary Clinton has a comfortable lead over Trump in the race towards 270 electoral votes that will determine the winner of the Presidential election. Trump will have to retain all the Republican leaning states and win half a dozen toss-up states that could go either way, to get to 270, and even then he will barely make it.