Trump is in South Carolina, not New Hampshire. His Strategy for an Independent Bid is Falling Into Place

Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee.  That was obvious from the day he first came down the escalator last summer in the Trump Tower and announced he was running for president, with rumors of paid audience fillers running rampant. It was obvious when he had over 20,000 people fill up a football stadium in Mobile, AL to enjoy his free stand up act. It was obvious when he humiliated a panicked Reince Priebus, the oaf currently running the Republican national committee organization, into appearing with him at Trump Tower to witness him sign a meaningless pledge to support the eventual nominee, as long as he was "treated fairly" by the party.

It has always been obvious.  Another thing that has been pretty obvious is that Donald Trump is a spoiler by design.  He is going to run as an independent, assuming a few conditions fall into place. The most important condition is that Hillary Clinton manage to win the Democratic nomination. Trump and the Clintons have always been pretty close, and it's not hard to imagine Trump as an actual "Manchurian Candidate" for them, sent into the heart of the GOP to wreck it.

So if Hillary has flopped by the end of March, and the Democratic Party is in chaos, with Bernie winning enough delegates in the Democrat's strict national proportional primary system to achieve parity with her nationwide, and rumors of a Biden draft and an FBI indictment recommendation running rampant, will Donald still begin an independent run?

Timing, as they say, is everything.  Most experts believe Donald can wait until late April, or even May to formally announce an independent run, though he would have to start at least planning one by late March.  The first general election ballot deadline is in Texas in May.  These experts believe that Trump can fund a successful effort to get on the ballot in most, if not all states, within this timeline, for not much more than a cool million dollars, and that includes some likely litigation challenging a handful of "sore loser" laws in certain states.

Here is how it will play out.  First the Democrats.  Trump won't run if Bernie Sander appears likely to be the nominee.  No self respecting real estate tycoon wants a socialist president.  But Sanders is unlikely to be the Democratic nominee in the end.  Hillary should be able to pull it out over him, even if it is close, much the mirror image of 2008, except she will play the Obama roll this time, squeaking out a narrow national primary win, and getting all the "super delegates' to put her over the top.

She will be battered and bruised badly, and will welcome, and need, Donald's help in a race against Rubio in the fall.

Also, if Email-gate is going to derail her, for the sake of the party and Biden's chances to unite it as a drafted nominee, the FBI will have to refer indictment at least by April, so Trump should know before the first filing deadline in Texas whether or not Biden will be the eventual nominee in a draft, and can decide if Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are preferable to Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley.

If everything works out with the Democrats in favor of an independent run, how will Trump justify it? He is not campaigning in New Hampshire today. In fact, he is in South Carolina.  What is his strategy?

Trump wants to finish at least a strong second in every primary prior to March 15, which will be essentially a three way contest between the eventual nominee Rubio, himself, and Ted Cruz.  It would not hurt if he won a handful of states, and his best bet to do that is in the South.

All the GOP primaries prior to March 15 are proportional states, meaning that the delegates are awarded roughly proportional to the vote.  This means Trump will have almost as many delegates as front runner Rubio prior to March 15, if he consistently finishes a fairly close second, and especially if he maybe wins a couple of contests.

After March 15, the party rules that guarantee an "Establishment" nominee kick in with a vengeance, and this is when Trump will start to make his case, and humiliate the GOP leadership.  Rubio will still be winning with probably less than 40 percent of the vote in a three way race, yet he will now be getting almost all of the delegates.

Trump will make the case this system is fundamentally "unfair" and he will demand that the national committee change the rules to require all primaries and caucuses award delegates proportionally.  He may even try to enlist Cruz to back him in this effort, which would be even more humiliating to the party's neoconservative establishment.

The GOP leaders will laugh at such a demand, of course, and reject it out of hand, even if they could make such a change.  Doing so would effectively surrender control of the party to the voters, which is the exact populist argument Trump will make.

Trump has proven a master manipulator of media, and he will use media to demonize the GOP and its nominating process as unfair and elitist.  The tea party base already knows this problem exists, and he will be playing to a friendly crowd, whether it supports him specifically or not.  He will get a large chunk of the populist right wing base on his side, including many Cruz voters.

When he fails to get the rules changed, Cruz will see the futility of his campaign, and suspend. This should occur by the end of March, or first half of April.  Assuming everything is working out ok with the Democrats, this is when Trump will publicly announce an independent run because of the inherently "unfair" nominating process in the Republican Party.

Trump can certainly pull 10-20 percent of the vote in a general election, on the cheap, using the same "living off the land" strategy he has used in the race so far, where he dominates "free media" and barnstorms friendly venues nationwide with his "road show" rally act, and then hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton (or Joe Biden).  What would he stand to gain? He is a real estate developer, and real estate developers depend a lot on government help for success: construction contracts for public projects, zoning variances, you name it.  And how hard will it be after the election for Trump to mend broken fences with NBC and jilted sponsors?

If Trump wanted to get a casino concession in Havana, would it also not hurt that the current US president owed their election to him, and be of the party that favors increased trade and investment in Cuba?