It is irrelevant whether I am a Trump supporter, but for the record, no, I am not. I am a Trump observer, and I describe what I see.
Trump is on to something big.
Many of my circle of friends scoff at Trump, including people who always vote Republican for president (and everything else). But my circle of Republican friends tend toward civic minded, college educated Chamber of Commerce Republicans, who were comfortable with Ford, Reagan, Dole, Romney. They see his disdain for "Presidential demeanor" and don't like it.
But those kinds of Republicans are no longer the Republican primary base. Republican primary voters are frustrated and angry about elite leadership, including Republican elites
From CNN polls, published today:
Republican voters are most sharply divided by education. Among those GOP voters who hold college degrees, the race is a close contest between the top four contenders, with Cruz slightly in front at 22%, Carson and Rubio tied at 19% and Trump at 18%. Among those without college degrees, Trump holds a runaway lead: 46% support the businessman, compared with 12% for Cruz, 11% for Carson and just 8% for Rubio.
Voters are responding to how Donald Trump says things and what he says in his own blunt way. Trump doesn't walk on eggshells when he talks. He joked with a group of Jewish businessmen that he, like them, enjoyed hard negotiation. The Israeli newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson, The Times of Israel, headlined that Trump made Anti-Semetic remarks. (Abe Foxman, spokesman for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League exonerated him in a statement, saying Trump was stereotyping businessmen, not jews.) I am confident the audience was not insulted by the remark and Trump drew friendly laughs. But there is always a snooty detractor out there.
I think the back-and-forth on this helps, not hurts, Trump. Just another example of how the nitpickers hassle regular people; point for Trump.
I cite this to demonstrate how treacherous it is to do political speech in America and to highlight one reason for Trump's success. He appears unguarded and extemporaneous for one big reason: he is in fact unguarded and extemporaneous.
Trump talks in plain, short sentences, and that he says what is on Republican voters' minds, which is that:
***immigrants are scary and they probably take some of our jobs
***Muslims cannot be trusted, not really
***white Americans aren't appreciated enough
***normal people get accused of racism or sexism for the itty bitty tiniest things that are "taken wrong" by people with a chip on their shoulder
***American leaders talk too much about partnerships and coalitions and peace process and diplomacy and we don't get the respect we would get if we just were tough
There. I think I have explained the Trump phenomenon.
Insofar as the various other candidates are saying Trump-like things then they are moving up in the polls. I see Bush has just started a suppress ad saying we are at war and he wants America to send ground troops to Syria, a sign of the moving center of gravity on foreign policy, moving Trumpish.
It is not yet clear whether Republicans will settle for a cleaned up and respectable version of Trump, or the real thing Trump, but that is what events have made the election, Trump in the center of the debate:. Watch the campaigns try to firm up the frames.
Republican frame:
Trump or Trump-ish realism vs. Hillary-liberal-eggshell-diplomacy-weakness-taxes
Hillary will attempt to frame the issue differently:
Extreme dangerous un-disciplined Trump-type
vs. reasonable, reliable familiar grown-up
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