Thinking About the Trumpthinkable
Paul Krugman
November 22, 2015 1:39 pm
I'm not a political scientist, manCredit
Alan Abramowitz reads the latest WaPo poll and emails:
Read these results and tell me how Trump doesn’t win the Republican nomination? I’ve been very skeptical about this all along, but I’m starting to change my mind. I think there’s at least a pretty decent chance that Trump will be the nominee.
Here’s why I think Trump could very well end up as the nominee:
1. He’s way ahead of every other candidate now and has been in the lead or tied for the lead for a long time.
2. The only one even giving him any competition right now is Carson who is even less plausible and whose support is heavily concentrated among one (large) segment of the base—evangelicals.
3. Rubio, the great establishment hope now, is deep in third place, barely in double digits and nowhere close to Trump or Carson.
4. By far the most important thing GOP voters are looking for in a candidate is someone to “bring needed change to Washington.”
5. He is favored on almost every major issue by Republican voters including immigration and terrorism by wide margins. The current terrorism scare only helps him with Republicans. They want someone who will “bomb the shit” out of the Muslim terrorists.
6. There is clearly strong support among Republicans for deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. They don’t provide party breakdown here, but support for this is at about 40 percent among all voters so it’s got to be a lot higher than that, maybe 60 percent, among Republicans.
7. If none of the totally crazy things he’s said up until now have hurt him among Republican voters, why would any crazy things he says in the next few months hurt him?
8. He’s very strong in several of the early states right now including NH, NV and SC. And he could do very well on “Super Tuesday” with all those southern states voting. I can’t see anyone but Trump or Carson winning in Georgia right now, for example, most likely Trump.
9. And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that’s at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what’s to stop Trump from then running as an independent?
Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting “death panels!”, whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting “Benghazi!”, and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn’t serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that? |
