Generally, across the three polls, Trump has established a somewhat better image among men, and older adults nearing the end of their work careers (those aged 50 to 64), a group that has expressed enormous anxiety about their economic prospects in other surveys. Trump’s image remains especially toxic among the components of the “coalition of the ascendant”—the groups at the core of the modern Democratic coalition that are all increasing as a share of the electorate. Support from those growing groups—particularly the millennial generation, minorities, and college-educated, single and secular whites, especially women.. Figures provided by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta, for instance, show that while 66 percent of Republican women expressed a favorable view of Trump in the December survey that plummeted to a minuscule 12 percent among all women who are not Republicans. Fully 81 percent of non-Republican women viewed Trump unfavorably... While 83 percent of Democratic women viewed Clinton favorably in the latest CNN survey, only 23 percent of non-Democratic women agreed. Only 19 percent of non-Democratic men expressed favorable views of Clinton in the CNN poll.
What Donald Trump Owes George Wallace
And despite his reputation as a belligerent speechmaker, the insecure Mr. Wallace privately sought to ingratiate himself with friends and foes alike. It’s hard to imagine the egotistic Mr. Trump beginning a call to a hostile newspaper editor by cheerfully explaining, as Mr. Wallace once did, “I just called up to kiss your ass some more.”
.. Mindful of his reputation as a defender of segregation, the Alabama governor avoided explicitly racist language. He was a pioneer in the use of code words to attack African-Americans while seldom mentioning race, instead condemning “asinine” school busing, the “bloc vote” and the “thugs” from America’s inner cities who supposedly stalked the nation’s streets.
.. A wild energy seemed to flow back and forth between Mr. Wallace and his audience as he called out their mutual enemies: bearded hippies, pornographers, sophisticated intellectuals who mocked God, traitorous anti-Vietnam War protesters, welfare bums, cowardly politicians and “pointy-head college professors who can’t even park a bicycle straight.”
.. Both George Wallace and Donald Trump are part of a long national history of scapegoating minorities: from the Irish, Catholics, Asians, Eastern European immigrants and Jews to Muslims and Latino immigrants. During times of insecurity, a sizable minority of Americans has been drawn to forceful figures who confidently promise the destruction of all enemies, real and imagined, allowing Americans to return to a past that never existed.
What’s the Point of the New Ted Cruz Birtherism?
Given all that, it would be hard for him to not at least go through some motions on questioning Cruz’s eligibility—even if Obama had been born abroad, his mother was an American citizen, which would give him the same claim to citizenship that Cruz does. (Not that Trump has allowed a foolish consistency to be the hobgoblin of his “really smart” mind.)
.. Moreover, the birther attack gives Trump a good method to attack Cruz, who has recently emerged as his major rival in polling both nationally and in Iowa. But what kind of weapon is birtherism? It is, at its root, an effective way of telling voters that Cruz isn’t like them. That he’s not one of us. That he’s different. In other words, it capitalizes on all of the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner sentiments that have driven his campaign all along.
.. Yet Trump repeated the idea on Face the Nation: “Cuba, generally speaking, is a Catholic country. And you don’t equate evangelicals with Cuba. I don’t.” But if these jabs are interpreted mostly as a method of reminding people that Cruz is Cuban, they make a great deal more sense. (Of course, Catholicism has also been used to other people in American politics for centuries.)
Purity, Disgust and Donald Trump
Many American voters, Haidt wrote,
perceive that the moral order is falling apart, the country is losing its coherence and cohesiveness, diversity is rising, and our leadership seems to be suspect or not up to the needs of the hour.
Haidt, a professor at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, argues that Trump
is not a conservative, and is not appealing to classical conservative ideas. He is an authoritarian, who is profiting from the chaos in Washington, Syria, Paris, San Bernardino, and even the chaos on campuses, which are creating a more authoritarian electorate in the Republican primaries.
.. Trump is more domineering than the other candidates, bullying opponents and reporters alike, calling them losers, refusing to ever apologize for anything. This could indeed appeal to those high in social-dominance orientation and authoritarianism, particularly those who mistake such domineering for actual authority.
Graham and Haidt have found in their research that for the most conservative voters, the two “values” with the strongest appeal are authority and purity.