Thread: Donald Trump's Silent Minority

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...lition/408742/

Donald Trump's Silent Minority

He’s identified a bloc of culturally conservative voters who are to the left of the Republican Party on economics. But is it enough to win the nomination?

Brian Frank / Reuters

David A. Graham 4:21 PM ET

A new Pew poll on the Republican race says several useful things about Donald Trump. For example: He’s still solidly ahead of the field in the race for the Republican nomination. The poll has Trump at 25 percent, followed by Ben Carson at 16, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina at 8, and Ted Cruz at 6. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has taken a beating—sliding out of the top five, only a bit ahead of Rand Paul, who’s on campaign death watch.

Pew includes a very intriguing table that breaks out two major topics of discussion: immigration and raising taxes on the wealthy. Those breakouts show where the Trump boom is coming from and why many pundits think he’s reached the limits of his appeal.

Republican Voters on Immigration and Taxing the Wealthy

It turns out there’s a large, underserved bloc of the Republican electorate that cares a lot about deporting illegal immigrants and taxing the wealthy—far more than the rest of the GOP—and no one is speaking their language like Donald Trump. Sure, some candidates will talk nearly as aggressively about immigration, but none of them is quite as strident, and none of them combines that with a populist tone on taxes. (Tone appears to be all it is—despite giving what amounted to a stirring defense of progressive taxation in the last Republican debate, the tax plan he’s released since then would cut taxes on the wealthy as well as lower-income Americans.) Nor is Trump’s rhetorical populism limited to taxes; he’s also spoken out against cutting Social Security or Medicare.

This is all evidence that Trump’s appeal isn’t just about immigration, and it also isn’t just a reaction against bad times. (As Benjamin Wallace-Wells aptly put it, Trump is “an outrage candidate for good times.”) Nor can his appeal be explained away purely by celebrity, although his fame enabled him to make this pitch in a way a lesser-known candidate with similar views couldn’t have.

The Democratic Party has always had voters who were to the right of the party on cultural issues but voted for its candidates for economic reasons—blue-collar white men, often union members, for example. Some left the party in 1980 as Reagan Democrats. Pew’s poll helps to outline a mirroring phenomenon—culturally conservative voters who stick with the GOP even though they’re well to its left on economics.

Democratic strategists gnash their teeth over this demographic and complain that they’re voting against their best interests, but cultural concerns are a powerful motivation for voters. Meanwhile, some Republicans have warned that the party’s standard bearers risk alienating its base by allying themselves with big-business, which tends to favor looser immigration laws and wants lower taxes. Some Republicans—this cycle, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum—have even tried to pitch themselves to this bloc, but never going so far as to advocate higher taxes on the wealthy. They're just not as far left as these Trump Republicans.

But all of this also points to where the ceiling might be on Trump’s support. A majority of Republican voters (53 percent) are either less likely to vote for a candidate who wants to deport illegal immigrants or don’t care. And a vast majority of Republican voters—about two-thirds—are less likely to vote or or indifferent to a candidate who wants to tax the wealth (or can telegraph to voters that he wants to, his real policies aside). There are enough Trump Republicans to push The Donald to the top of the national polls, but unless the rest of the primary electorate remains badly fragmented, not enough to secure the nomination. Trump has taken to resuscitating the old Nixonian phrase “the silent majority,” but his problem is he seems only to have identified a significant silent minority.

Well, if Trump doesn't have enough support to win the nomination at 25% with at least a 10% l.ead, then who do you Geniuses think with less than that has enough to win the nomination?

It's just hilarious reading these articles about "ceilings". This is the United States, you morons, there is no "ceiling". The sky is the limit and on primary day, it's who gets the most votes.

Republicans are entitled to cling to their Rubio's and Bush's, because they're war hawks or a brother of one, or because they're a "son of an immigrant" or a former President.

Republicans are entitled to say "I do" to a Carson, who speaks their religion or because he's a Cuba Gooding they can touch and ask to sign an autograph, or because he says it's okay to fly the Confederate Flag at a NASCAR race without condemnation and isn't excited about a Muslim in the White House.

Republicans are entitled to cheer Fiorina because she's woman with a persona they can relate to or because of her great pity party story-telling to promote herself, after all isn't good lying for self-promotion a key ingredient in politics and war, i. e. Iraq has WMD's, Mission Accomplished, Free Trade is Good for America, etc., until you're caught and the facts prove otherwise?

Republicans are entitled to support Donald Trump because he wants to end illegal immigration, stop/reduce legal immigration, fix the free trade inequities, lower taxes, bring home the bacon from overseas, stay out of wars with no purpose or end-game, whack the federal budget of waste and inefficiency, rebuild our infrastructure at affordable numbers, protect our gun rights, put Americans including black Americans back to work, repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a private system while working a reimbursement deal directly with hospitals to ensure those who can't afford insurance can still receive the medical care they need, protect Social Security, and build a beautiful border wall between the US and Mexico.

This is a free country, Americans including Republicans can support a candidate for any damn reason or no damn reason they want without being belittled or diminished by the media.

It's time the media realizes its words and games no longer control the American Soul. 2016 is the year we laugh at you at your expense, and if you want advertising money you need to understand that voters are the customers of the companies who pay the fees that pay your salaries, and in that arena, the Customer Is Always Right.

Get my drift?

News article writers writers will perpetually come up with new spin on old topics. Otherwise they would be unemployed. The 'professional' class---if you can even call it that when you include these vested prognosticators and pundits---is an increasing burden to US society. A reason why we actually need to import people who DO SOMETHING.

But since they are so inept at real life, and getting off their duffs--- I would expect a continuous outpouring of the same garbage through election season. And likely until our society totally collapses. And then of course, there is George Will, too.