I think that Donald Trump’s beef with Megyn Kelly is stupid, and his promised boycott of the next debate because she will be a moderator is more about tactics than any real sense of offense.

It’s a win-win for Donald.

He is clearly would be the one on stage with the most to lose, and by standing up to Fox, he reinforces the image that he wishes to cultivate: That he is beholden to no one, because he is dissing what is arguably the kingmaker of Republican Presidential politics:

Instead of attending the debate, “We’ll have an event here in Iowa, with potentially another network, to raise money for wounded warriors,” campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said. “And Fox will go from probably having 24 million viewers to about 2 million.”

The fracas escalated quickly on Tuesday, but was the culmination of months of tension between the GOP frontrunner and the Fox News host Megyn Kelly.

………

Trump’s apparent decision changes the dynamic for Thursday’s event, which is the last GOP debate before the all-important Iowa caucuses.

Without Trump, Ted Cruz will take center stage. Cruz also challenged Trump to go mano a mano.

………

The disagreement came to a head on Tuesday afternoon. Around 1 p.m. Trump polled his fans on Twitter, asking, “Should I do the GOP debate?”

The poll suggested a real reluctance to attend, perhaps because Trump, as the frontrunner, arguably has the most to lose on Thursday night. The respondents were evenly split, with about half saying he should skip it.

In an Instagram video that coincided with his poll, Trump said, “Megyn Kelly’s really biased against me. She knows that, I know that, everybody knows that. Do you really think she can be fair at a debate?”

The other winner here is Ms. Kelly, a phony journalist who can use this incident to better pretend that she is a real journalist.

My prediction^* is that Trump wins Iowa and New Hampshire, and the then runs the table to become the Republican nominee.

I need to update my f%$#ing passport.

^*With the obvious caveat that Saroff electoral predictions have frequently been very, very wrong.