The GOP base is changing, and Trump’s the only one who gets it

A small handful of prominent pundits — and one politician — are beginning to grasp that the GOP establishment’s concept of its present-day party “base” is inaccurate, insulting and — most importantly — hopelessly disconnected from the emerging political reality.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal last week, Peggy Noonan gave one of the best mainstream articulations, so far, of how alien, untamable and unknowable are the tendencies of the newly emerging populist “base” to the established political class — and how fully, by contrast, Donald Trump has resonated with, and helped consolidate, that emergent zeitgeist.

“Here are some things I think are happening,” Noonan begins:

One is the deepening estrangement between the elites and the non-elites in America. This is the area in which Trumpism flourishes …

Second, Mr. Trump’s support is not limited to Republicans, not by any means.

Third, the traditional mediating or guiding institutions within the Republican universe — its establishment, respected voices in conservative media, sober-minded state party officials — have little to no impact on Mr. Trump’s rise. Some say voices of authority should stand up to oppose him, which will lower his standing. But Republican powers don’t have that kind of juice anymore. Mr. Trump’s supporters aren’t just bucking a party, they’re bucking everything around, within and connected to it.

… My biggest sense is that political professionals are going to have to rethink “the base,” reimagine it when they see it in their minds.

Noonan goes on to talk about working-class people she knows — people who voted for Barack Obama and consider themselves liberal-leaning free political agents — who love Trump. Her account of one acquaintance, a Dominican immigrant, is especially enlightening.

Something is going on, some tectonic plates are moving in interesting ways. My friend Cesar works the deli counter at my neighborhood grocery store. He is Dominican, an immigrant, early 50s, and listens most mornings to a local Hispanic radio station, La Mega, on 97.9 FM. Their morning show is the popular “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” and after the first GOP debate, Cesar told me, they opened the lines to call-ins, asking listeners (mostly Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican) for their impressions. More than half called in to say they were for Mr. Trump. Their praise, Cesar told me a few weeks ago, dumbfounded the hosts. I later spoke to one of them, who identified himself as D.J. New Era. He backed Cesar’s story. “We were very surprised,” at the Trump support, he said. Why? “It’s a Latin-based market!”

“He’s the man,” Cesar said of Mr. Trump.

… I said: Cesar, you’re supposed to be offended by Trump, he said Mexico is sending over criminals, he has been unfriendly, you’re an immigrant. Cesar shook his head: No, you have it wrong. Immigrants, he said, don’t like illegal immigration, and they’re with Mr. Trump on anchor babies. “They are coming in from other countries to give birth to take advantage of the system. We are saying that! When you come to this country, you pledge loyalty to the country that opened the doors to help you.”

Guys like that might not sound especially Republican when discussing some of the GOP establishment’s other sacred cows. But, when possessed of a strong opinion on immigration — an issue that’s supposed to be a Republican one (yet which neither party has been willing to address) — people like Cesar will get behind the person who speaks unequivocally, in plain language they recognize and appreciate.

The GOP establishment’s weakness and self-protecting political passivity has led to a rapid degradation of the “box” in which its conservative base is, ideally, supposed to fit. With Trump, anybody can fit. People like Cesar can fit.

“I will throw in here that almost wherever I’ve been this summer, I kept meeting immigrants who are or have grown conservative — more men than women, but women too,” Noonan summarizes.

“America is so in play.

“And: ‘the base’ isn’t the limited, clichéd thing it once was, it’s becoming a big, broad jumble that few understand.”

And the GOP establishment will certainly be the last to understand it — probably to its oligarchs’ great disappointment.

As if volunteering to help prove the point, GOP establishment poster child Jeb Bush played completely against this burgeoning, populist and inscrutable new calculus last week by enlisting the support of another establishment poster child: failed former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Cantor’s fame grew exponentially after voters fired him from his job last year, effecting one of the biggest electoral upsets of an establishment incumbent in Congressional history. He lost to a Tea Party primary challenger.

Who better than Trump to point out the cluelessness and futility of asking a guy like that to run your ground game?

“Who wants the endorsement of a guy (@EricCantor) who lost in perhaps the greatest upset in the history of Congress?” Trump tweeted.

Well, Mr. Trump, Jeb Bush wants it, along with guys like Eric Cantor; that’s who. They think it will help them win, that it will help preserve the status quo. We’ll see.

The post The GOP base is changing, and Trump’s the only one who gets it appeared first on Personal Liberty®.

from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/the-gop-base-is-changing-and-trumps-the-only-one-who-gets-it/

from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/the-gop-base-is-changing-and-trumps-the-only-one-who-gets-it/