Why Donald Trump Is Such a Formidable Politician
As I pointed out back in December, one of the things that makes Trump a formidable candidate is that he’s tough to pigeonhole.
.. It is sometimes said that Trump’s support is confined to the poorly educated, but in the Granite State he also came out ahead among people who attended some college and among college graduates. The only educational demographic with which he didn’t finish first was voters with a postgraduate degree.
.. When Trump makes offensive comments or insults his opponents and media critics, it seems only to confirm in the minds of many Republican and independent voters that he is an authentic anti-politician.
.. The message that he is delivering—a mélange of American nativism, conservative politics, and populist economics—is also falling on receptive ears.
.. When he claims that free trade with China and other countries has undermined American prosperity and cost countless American jobs, many blue-collar workers think that sounds right. When he says that the influx of illegal immigrants, many of whom have crossed the Mexican border, is having a similar impact on American living standards, that strikes a chord, too. And when he says that something drastic has to be done to prevent the threat of further terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals, he is preaching to the converted.
According to the New Hampshire exit poll, nearly half of the voters in the Republican primary said that they were angry at the federal government, and seventy per cent said that they were worried about the economy. Four in ten said that they were in favor of deporting undocumented immigrants en masse. Six in ten said that they were “very” worried about terrorism. And fully two-thirds expressed support for Trump’s proposal to institute a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.
.. An establishment figure like Jeb Bush or John Kasich can’t hope to compete with him on incendiary issues like immigration and preventing Muslims from entering the country. A social conservative like Ted Cruz may match Trump’s rhetoric in these areas, or come close, but Cruz hasn’t got much of an economic message for embattled Reagan Democrats.