Dear Republican Party Leaders,
Instead of gloating on social media about how badly Hilary Clinton just lost New Hampshire, get down off your high horse right now, forget about Bernie and Hillary, push the panic button and start asking yourselves how Trump – who is neither a conservative nor a Republican but who is a bigoted, negative jerk and very proud of it – just mopped the granite floor with all the alternatives at the same time *by the same huge one-on-one margin* by which Bernie beat Hillary Clinton. And if you think even Kasich is the clearly comfortable second choice of voters, you are delusional. Neither Bernie nor Hillary Clinton is your problem right now and you might have *three weeks left* in which to fix it.
We have a serious problem. Trump would have crushed Cruz and Rubio in Iowa if he had bothered to campaign there. Trump, not Kasich, just crushed everyone in New Hampshire. While Trump is clearly not the choice of a majority of voters anywhere, we can’t have four or five alternatives all splitting the vote, or else any one of them deciding to back Trump could give Trump the nomination (the alternative being that they all agree on one among themselves – guess which is likelier). Two alternatives is the max.
Trump just won in two different ways: He won outright, and his opponents (Kasich, Cruz, Bush, Rubio, Fringe) all split the vote roughly evenly five ways. The fact that Kasich finished slightly ahead of that pack is almost meaningless. The New Hampshire result was a total triumph for Trump: He now has four credible opponents after winning New Hampshire instead of the two he had after losing Iowa. And here is everyone cheering Kasich, completely missing the big picture.
The Trump phenomenon exists because he alone is irresponsible enough to unite the lunatic fringe while being iconoclastic enough to draw disaffected voters into the primary while there are too many responsible candidates in the race splitting the rest of the vote too many ways. Oddly, by being the only candidate who dares to be so irresponsible, he commands a plurality, in part by successfully Kardashianizing the race while being a man with nothing to lose (in the dangerous sense rather than the inspiring sense).
Perhaps counter-intuitively to someone who isn’t a Republican, Trump polls poorly (so far) among evangelical and conservative voters, whose religious inclinations might lead them to more readily see right through the man and judge the man, which in this case is the correct response. (…He polls zero among everyone with a brain, but we live in a democratic republic). He is winning independents, and relatively liberal Republican voters many of whom are simply not caring about what he says and does. He did poorly in Iowa and well in New Hampshire partly for just this reason.
The reasons for his appeal at all are complicated. The biggest might simply be that many people aren’t smart enough or mindful enough to tell the difference between a straight talker and an irresponsible jerk or a vicious liar, between real strength and stupid aggression and astroturfed rage, or between wealth and ability (many, but certainly not all, and certainly not Trump, rich people earned every dollar of it). Trump is a pseudo-independent. Top Nazi Goebbels – who knew whereof he spoke, in the context of cynical lying – was correct when he observed that if you’re going to lie in politics, go big, because people will suss out the small lies but the big lies carry the nation. And that’s exactly what Trump is doing. He is embodying that principle in a personal way.
I would never vote for Trump, nor would I ever vote for Sanders or Clinton, but if Trump does get the nomination the GOP will deserve to lose both my vote for President and the election.
Regards,
A Real Conservative Republican
**The previous was an expert and summary of a conversation had with a friend on Facebook. His name is omitted to protect his privacy.
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