Certified Dimwits: The Key to Herr Trump’s Lead
Donald Trump leads among Republicans because he has a stranglehold on the most ignorant voters in America. That’s not just our opinion, but an Actual Fact.
As our old friend Bill Schneider noted more politely the other day in a column:
Trump’s support for the Republican nomination is not defined by ideology or age or gender. It’s defined by education. Among GOP voters with a college degree in the latest CNN poll, Trump comes in fourth with just 18 percent. But he has a huge lead among non-college voters — 46 percent. No other candidate comes close.
According to that CNN poll, the presidential race is close among GOP voters who hold college degrees, with Ted Cruz at 22%, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio tied at 19% and Trump at 18%.
But among those without college degrees, Trump leads with 46%, compared to Cruz at 12%, Carson at 11% and Rubio at just 8%. The Washington Post also has polling showing the education gap for Trump and explaining why uneducated people are most pro-Donald.
Trump and Torquemada: A Calbuzz analogy that most Trump supporters wouldn’t get:
ISIS : Islam :: Inquisition : Christianity
Yes, as the bloviators on TV keep reminding us, Trump personifies the anti-Obama, anti-government, anti-establishment and xenophobic impulses of part of the white working class in America. Nothing he says is too outrageous, too racist or too fascist for them.
That his fact-free demagoguery sounds increasingly like the ravings of Adolph Hitler doesn’t bother him.
As Politico noted:
“You’re increasingly being compared to Hitler. Doesn’t that give you any pause at all?” ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked the Republican poll leader on “Good Morning America,” displaying an image of the Philadelphia Daily News’ punning Tuesday front-page headline “The New Furor.”
In response, Trump said no, invoking what he termed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese many years ago” during World War II. “This was a president that was highly respected by all,” Trump said, remarking upon the Democratic president’s actions during the war. “If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse.”
What FDR did to foreign nationals during World War II “was far worse” than what Hitler did? Or far worse than what he, Trump, is proposing? You decide what he meant.
OMG – Cheney’s right: What’s nuts is this: Trump probably meant that what FDR did was “far worse” than what he’s proposing. But even if he asserted that what Roosevelt did was worse than Hitler, his uneducated, blood-thirsty supporters would probably agree.
As if to prove the point, Andrew Anglin, neo-Nazi publisher of the Daily Stormer, wrote of Trump’s proposal, “Finally, someone speaks sense… Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR.”
Trump isn’t backing down, despite being denounced by just about every thinking person in the political world. Even the loathsome Dick Cheney, was repulsed:
“I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” he told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from. A lot of people, my ancestors got here, because they were Puritans.”
Not that this will matter to Trump and his know-nothing supporters: Every denouncement from any political figure is seen as further evidence that THEY are idiots and that The Donald is inviolate. It’s a closed system.
Whether the Republican Party – and it’s their responsibility now – can put a silver stake in the demon’s heart and thereby save their chances of being sucked dry in the general election next November, is doubtful.
And if they try, Trump can just fund his own independent bid, thereby further eroding the GOP’s fortunes. As he tweeted Tuesday: “A new poll indicates that 68% of my supporters would vote for me if I departed the GOP & ran as an independent.” Which would guarantee a landslide for Hillary Clinton.
Pardon our schadenfreude Herr Trump.
There was a time when this large segment of the GOP could be placated with someone like Sarah Palin, or by extravagant rhetoric about Obama or Clinton. No more. Now that they see the visceral triumph over the cerebral (at least in the polls), they taste real power. If Trump is the nominee, every single Republican candidate is going to have to defend or apologize for him. If not Trump, the nominee will have to do something to win over these voters. I think we are watching the fracturing of the GOP.
Pat Buchanan beat Bob Dole in the 1996 New Hampshire Republican Primary. George Wallace won the 1972 Democratic Primary in Michigan. Pete Wilson bashed Latinos in 1994 with Proposition 187 and was reelected as Governor. Trump is pulling in the Pete Wilson/Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party. If Trump said, I will deport all American Muslims, including Muhammad Ali, his supporters would cheer. If Trump said I will deport all Mexican Americans, his supporters would cheer. As now Congressman Tom McClintock told a crown on the Sacramento Capitol grounds in 2003- do you remember what our neighborhoods use to be in the 1950s. Those Republicans do remember and want to go back to those times but time has passed them by.
Trump may be polling well with a minority of a minority party, but he is not a political leader. He is the leading lemming, in search of a cliff to dive over.