Thursday August 6th, 2015 marks a momentous day for the Republican Party: the official beginning of an election cycle that will, at least for the foreseeable future, be dominated by the Frankensteins monster of right-wing ridiculousness, Donald Trump. The first Republican Primary Debate will go live at 9pm eastern time from the Quicken Loans Arena, a stadium that will be filled with some of the biggest egos its seen since Lebron James lost Game 6 of the NBA Finals there. The structure of the debate, slightly altered so as to allow the threadbare field of the GOP the opportunity to include candidates with slightly less support, will include the top 10 candidates with those receiving higher poll numbers closer to the middle. As it stands now the 10 would be (in order): Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and John Kasich with some other guy just missing out...Gosh, who was it?... I can't remember...Oops. (0:20)

So, to reiterate, as it stands now, barring any miraculous, divine intervention in which all wispy-haired, leather-skinned, serially-irreverent real estate moguls banished to the island from Lord of the Flies, the magnanimous Sir Donald Trump will enter the first Republican Primary Debate as the outright leader with somewhere around 19 percent of the popular vote (and rising).

As hilarious as it is soul crushing, it creates an interesting but not altogether unfamiliar dynamic for this debate. Being the cancerous political tumor he is, candidates will try and avoid him like the plague, and in an unlikely turn of events, even try to physically distance themselves from him as those with more support like Bush and Walker could seek the peripheries of the lineup as opposed to the typically coveted middle area.

Regardless of the relatively unimportant positioning, we can expect a viewership almost as over-the-top as the level of political discourse as people are going to want to witness the beautiful trainwreck that is 2016's Republican primary field. Whether or not Trump burns out as most pundits expect him to, one thing's for sure: he's not going down without a fight, and he's willing to take down as many people as he can with him. Now, according to most polls, the majority of Republicans still denounce him, but he has a more singular and codified appeal than any of the other candidates thus far, resulting in his current poll position. And, as would be expected, there are plenty of complaints that he is ruining the party. However, there is growing support from the more reasonable, moderate side of the Republican Party to nominate him as the candidate in a sort of coup de grâce to the obstinate old guard of the party. Essentially, they would have him rise as the party's fearless leader, only to be publicly slaughtered in the election, opening the door to serious party reform.

Whether or not that is even a realistic outcome for this storybook of an election cycle appears unlikely, but it does go to show the extreme nature of the radical right wing and the lengths to which other Republicans are willing to go to separate themselves from it.

With all that in mind; Thursday's gonna be a real barn-burner. If you thought last years was good with then leader Herman Cain at the helm of the GOP barge, this years will be a veritable cornucopia of absurdity.

Just to tide you guys over until then here's a classy Trumpism:

"You know, it really doesn't matter what the media write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."

Cheers, Don