If GOP rejects him, Trump can join Shopping Party

Things don’t appear to be going all that smoothly for Donald Trump. Using bombast, heavy-handed threats and vague promises may not get him to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland as the GOP nominee.

Last week Trump was complaining that the GOP nomination process was “rigged” against him, and he accused other candidates of stealing his delegates.

Trump’s position is hardly precarious; he is still the leader of the pack. But if there is a perilous fall in his future, he and others have hope, thanks to a new idea from Hawaii.

Just in time for Trump, the over-the-top consumer and wheeler-dealer, is the newly minted American Shopping Party.

“When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping” may not be the party’s motto, but party founder, Raghu John Giuffre, said he is designing a political movement that is easy, fun and is something anyone can do.

So what is easier than shopping? Giuffre asks.

The theory, according to the American Shopping Party platform, is to go national and get 50 million shoppers out shopping on the first Saturday of each month — and asking to see only American-made products and then only buying American-made product. This would stimulate the economy, provide thousands of new jobs, leading to sustainability and a new economy, Giuffre said.

“We only go with the positive, we are about people, not causes, we want candidates to change the discourse, we are here to stir things up,” said Giuffre, who is currently living on Hawaii island but will shortly be moving back to Honolulu.

The plan for the American Shopping Party came out of a series of books Giuffre said he wrote to promote his theories of “Raghu-nomics,” which he described as “a new form of democracy — economic democracy.”

Giuffre must be a fairly good salesman, because he did jump the first hurdle to setting up a political party, which is getting 707 registered voters to sign a petition asking the state to recognize a new party. The next hurdle is for the party to name officers and a set of rules. So far the state Office of Elections has approved his petition. The 707 needed signatures come from the state law requiring new parties to have a petition signed by “no less than one-tenth of one percent of the total registered voters of the state as of the last preceding general election.”

There were 706,890 registered voters in the 2014 general election.

Giuffre, 51, a self-described “original Hare Krishna” who says he was educated in India, said he hasn’t decided if he will run for Congress or president under the American Shopping Party label.

He ran for Congress in 2010 from Hawaii’s 1st District and got 177 votes. Winning or losing, though, is not what he is about, Giuffre said.

“I’m here to extend the discourse, not win elections,” he said.

And if the GOP doesn’t work out, what better party for a tirelessly self-promoting New York billionaire who favors private jets with gold faucets than the American Shopping Party?

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.