He’s at 17 percent in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, which ties him for second with Huckabee (who’s not running) behind Romney (who can’t win) at 20 percent.

Not everything in here is good. A lot of it is absurd, frankly. But what Trump has that the rest of the field doesn’t, it seems, is the stones to just say what he thinks. The consultants might stroke out at some of it; so what? No offense to the consultants, but at least on the national level the GOP consultants are the ones who have created this wimpy, muddled, scared and tentative candidate template we have now.

Is Trump a conservative? Probably not. He’s more of a populist. But here’s the thing – Trump is going to push the issues most of the country wants pushed. With the exception of the birther thing; I see that as a way to acquire a decent-sized constituency within the GOP and once he’s acquired them I expect Trump to move on from that unless he can get some sort of dirt on Obama that validates it. Otherwise, I expect Trump to push a lot of 70-30 issues if he were to run and get the nomination; it just so happens that every 70-30 issue out there has the conservative position holding the 70.

Anyway, here’s the video…