When the 2016 presidential campaign season began earlier this year, I started writing articles about every candidate when they officially announced their candidacies. I made a promise in many of these columns, that I would take each candidate seriously no matter what I personally thought their chances of winning were, or how much I agreed or disagreed with their platform. I promised not to be snarky, above all. I think that running for president is a serious business, and even though it does occasionally include what I would call "not really serious" candidates, I still wanted to give a measure of respect to each entrant to the race at the very start of their campaign. As I put it repeatedly, there will be plenty of time for being snarky later (usually on Fridays, of course).

But I did add one qualification, virtually every time I made my snark-free promise in the introduction to these articles. I promised a serious look at all new candidates, but I also warned I'd be likely to break my promise if Donald Trump entered the race (in fact, I already broke this promise back in February, by writing an article where I begged Trump to actually run). Because every man's got his limit as to how long he can stick to his principles, and the concept of "President Trump" would stretch mine to the breaking point, obviously. Today, Donald Trump entered the presidential race. Hence, the snark-free promise is declared null and void for today (it will be reinstated for the remaining entrants, never fear).

Donald Trump as president. Sure boggles the mind, don't it? Heh. Can't wait for him to try "You're fired!" with senators or Supreme Court justices -- that'd be a laugh riot! His campaign, as he would say, is "gonna be yuuuuuuuge!" Is America waiting for President Trump? Well, we're all surely about to find that out.

Trump has been teasing the media with a possible presidential run for over a decade now. He keeps threatening to get in the race, and then he decides at the last minute (after every possible iota of media attention has been duly milked) that he's not going to run after all. This time around, though, Trump has been giving signs that he was seriously going to jump in -- he hired some folks in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he's now given his version of his assets to the press (but not his tax returns, making his claims hard to verify). He has yet to actually file the necessary paperwork to be an official candidate, but this time around it looks like he's taking his publicity stunt a lot further than ever before.

Could Donald Trump win the presidency? Well, the sane answer is "not in a million, billion years," of course. American voters may at times be pretty stupid, but even the most cynical wouldn't believe that they'd be stupid enough to elect Donald Trump. I don't see any pathway to victory for "The Donald," either in the general election or even in the clown parade that is known as the Republican nomination process. It just ain't going to happen, folks.

Trump's candidacy is going to cause the Republican Party several problems, though. The first is that Trump will always be able to (pun definitely intended) trump every other Republican candidate in the "speaking off-the-cuff, and saying monumentally ridiculous things" category. Oh, sure, people like Newt Gingrich set the bar pretty high (or low, really) in years past, and it's undeniable that we've already got several people in the Republican race who seem to have mastered the art of "saying idiotic things" (Ben Carson immediately springs to mind), but Donald Trump is in a league of his own, really. This is going to set up a conundrum for the more serious Republican candidates: should they just ignore Trump's blathering, or should they respond when he truly goes over the edge? We'll see a partial answer to that question soon, as in his ad-libbed announcement today he has already called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and other nasty names. Will Jeb or Marco respond? We'll have to see, but this problem wouldn't even exist if Trump weren't in the running.

The second big problem for Republicans is that Trump is actually doing a lot better in the polling than several much more plausible candidates -- including the only woman. Granted, this is the difference between pulling in four percent and pulling in one percent, so it's kind of splitting hairs (please feel free to insert your own "Trump's hair" joke here), but this is going to become a distinction with a difference very soon. The first televised debate between the Republicans already has a cutoff line. Only the top 10 candidates in the recent polls will be invited to the debate.

Trump is currently polling in ninth place.

This puts him on the stage. In tenth place currently is Rick Perry, who may also make it to the first debate. But -- if the polling holds steady (which it likely won't, polls swing wildly up and down in the early days) -- the following people will not make the cut (in the order they're polling currently, highest to lowest): Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham, and Bobby Jindal. Now, granted, Kasich and Jindal haven't even announced yet, so they may move upwards if and when they make their runs official. But that is a list which includes two governors and two senators who won't be in a debate that features Donald Trump. That, to put it mildly, is a problem for the Republican National Committee. An even bigger problem is the exclusion of Carly Fiorina, since (as I mentioned) she's the only Republican woman in the race. The optics of leaving all of these candidates out and letting Trump spout nonsense on a Republican debate stage are pretty darn terrible.

The 2016 Republican presidential nomination race will go down in history as the "Why not me?" contest, no matter who wins it. Normally, this is a disease that only afflicts every member of the Senate. There aren't many senators who don't look in the mirror and see presidential material beaming back at them, to put this another way. But in the 2016 contest, this disease seems to be spreading fast.

I guess a case could be made that a real estate mogul and shameless media whore could indeed launch a viable presidential campaign. We've already got a brain surgeon and a failed tech executive in the race, so why not a New York guy who owns a lot of buildings with his name on them? Well, whatever shred of plausibility that reasoning may have goes right out the window when you replace "a real estate mogul" with "Donald Trump."

Trump is certainly going to make a lot of people happy with his run. They are mainly employed as gag writers for late night comedy shows, in fact. Many pundits (most of them on the left side of things) will also be overjoyed at the prospect of a Trump candidacy, because the Trump articles just write themselves, really.

It's not just me, in other words. The most obvious prediction in politics is a direct result of Donald Trump's presidential entry: "There will be snark." Oh, my, will there be snark. Yes, indeedy, it will be a snarktastic experience for all. It will in fact be downright snarkadelic. Or, to put it another way, welcome to the ranks of the Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump!

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant