Commentary: Trumped by the Upset Subset

The Anti-Obama crowd buoyed by paranoia

The "leading" Republican for the White House, Donald Trump, hasn't polled higher than 26 percent. Trump's standing merely shows most GOP voters aren't taking the primary seriously yet. Why should they? Any real vote is more than a half a year away. People have lives.

Trump is famous. So there's not much to be embarrassed about that nobody's done better up to now. Well, at least not for anybody but Jeb Bush, who's clearly anointed by GOP donors. Those donors seem to think they are entitled to a better return on their investment than they got with the first two. Look at Bush III's candidacy as a kind of troubled asset relief program.

Here's what's starting to make me wonder in this just-started primary. Trump insults prisoners of war. He makes outrageous claims about illegal immigrants. He implies a female who was tough on him in a debate was on her period. But he hasn't collapsed.

I'm just as tired of stage-managed candidates reading their scripts as anyone -- more so. Nobody gets to hear more dull, flat script-reading than someone in my line of work. I'm not so starved for candor, though, that I'm all right with listening to a candidate speculate on what part of Megyn Kelly's body might have been bleeding.

Consider:

"He's not a war hero," Trump said of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured."

"I am now hearing it's 30 million, it could be 34 million, which is a much bigger problem." That's on the number of illegal immigrants, which is pretty much agreed to be around 12 million, even by very vigorous illegal immigration opponents.

And about Kelly, the debate moderator who clearly went after Trump. She was previously known around here for much more friendly interviews of Duggars: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." Her nose? Yeah. Right.

When did this sort of bombast become acceptable? My guess is that tolerance of it is a sign of frustration. For seven years, there's been an upset subset of GOP primary voters who've dined at the all-you-can-eat paranoia buffet. They've been told repeatedly that the man in the White House is a Muslim, Kenyan agent of America's doom. Just recently, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin wouldn't even acknowledge President Barack Obama is a Christian.

Nothing's off limits any more. Worse, voters are assured constantly that the U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue, allowing clearly unconstitutional things. Congress, meanwhile, is stymied. Therefore, the only election that "matters" is for president. We're continually told that office-holder can do anything he wants, however unconstitutional, by executive order. Nobody can stop him.

Now guess what? Their most visible, durable GOP candidate for president is a white, trash-talking, money-making alpha male who's says he can bring back the country this subset is comfortable in. He can do it all by executive order, I suppose. This is where you get after your party has ridden the anti-Obama paranoia pony for years and been glad to do it.

Problem is, not all old white folks are on board with that plan -- and nobody else is. Yes, Republicans, you really did lose the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. And if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll lose 2016, too. What you're doing is making people who elect Republicans in droves to Congress and state legislatures too uncomfortable with your presidential candidates to vote for them.

Hispanics are an important voting bloc. So are blacks. So are gays. And women of all types are the biggest voting bloc of all. However, it's become increasing obvious in recent elections that there's also some number of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and straight men who, for instance, always knew there was a severe lack of social justice in this country. We recognize as a group that our kind have no inherent right to a monopoly on power, even as we benefited from it, however passively. Now we're among the folks who go "Trump said what!?" We've been doing that a lot lately.

I vote and I have photo ID.

Stoking paranoia for political gain is one thing. Getting to where such ravings carry little cost in your party's primary is something else.

It doesn't matter how frustrated anybody gets, 1950's America isn't coming back. Looking forward, Hillary's running, folks. And there's definitely blood in her eyes.

Commentary on 08/15/2015

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