New Hampshire voters, like Iowans, can’t stand Hillary, and really, really dislike Trump.
It is reasonable to assume that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are typical of swing state voters, except that they are taking the election more seriously so far. If that is correct, these numbers suggest that Republicans shouldn’t be too discouraged about the bizarre headlines that have seemed to dominate the race in its very early stages.
The problem is that the Republicans have to handle Trump with kid gloves, because his threat of running third party is very real. On the other hand, the degree of that threat will be a function of how strong the Republican candidate is. I think he’d be likely to pull a lot of Democrat votes, too, as Perot did.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Yes, the Republican leadership is driving its base into the arms of Donald Trump.
Also, related: The attempted coup of the Republican leadership begins. Both Republican leadership and Democrats hate the Tea Party, because they hate the constraints of the Constitution.
[Early-afternoon update]
More thoughts on the meaning of Trump:
let’s leave Bush to one side—if only we could!—and return to the clown in mufti, Donald Trump. What only a few commentators have cottoned on to is that Trump has touched a nerve. His popularity may be fragile, may even be illusory. But he has, in his semi-articulate jabbering, reminded people that there is a world outside the beltway. It’s partly a matter of substance, partly style. People in many parts of the country are appalled by the flood of illegal immigrants that is changing the character of this country. Trump speaks to that. He also, quite obviously, eschews the focus groups. He doesn’t care about donors because he could himself pay for his own campaign several times over. He says what he thinks. It would be nice, perhaps, if the path between his cerebellum and his mouth were a bit longer and more circumspect, but his bluntness plays to the masses. He delights in tweaking the politically correct establishment.
…I don’t think Donald Trump will be the GOP candidate in 2016, and I don’t think he would win if he were. But he has raised some issues that the high and mighty dispensers of conventional wisdom would do well to ponder. Moreover, he has done it in a way that, though terribly, terribly vulgar, is catapulting Trump to first place in the polls. What does that tell us? That the people are stupid and need to be guided by the suits in Washington? If you believe that, I submit, you are going to be profoundly disappointed come November 2016.
Let’s hope.
[Update a few minutes later]
Link to Roger Kimball piece was wrong. Fixed now, sorry.
Your link to what appears to be a Roger’s Rules article about Trump is actually a link to the Wayne Hale story about pilot error.
What we have here is a protest vote. Republican elites are worse than democrats. Don’t be surprised if it goes all the way.
The good news is we get more Philadelphia experiment/Reagan jokes with Trump taking the Reagan part. “Hey, I know this guy…” the time traveler says.
I’m not worried about Trump. He’s getting a lot of popularity, and I too like some of what he is saying. But other than running a great campaign to make it to the first debate, he’s running a horrible campaign for the long run. He’s peaking way early, and yeah, he is peaking. He’s good at media and PR, but tracking his own success in those areas, he does well for a few months, makes a lot of money, then people get bored with him, and Trump disappears.
I think the Republicans ought to learn how Trump doesn’t shy away from the media trying to go negative with him. He embraces the attempt at bad publicity as a vehicle to get coverage. I’m not going to say even bad publicity is good publicity, because it is not. But if CNN wants to put a microphone to his lips and a camera in his face to ask him a stupid question, he can play the Hillary game of dismissing the question and then stating his own message.
It is sensational, and the media likes that stuff, even when they complain about it. So the media will keep doing it, and he gets free coverage. It is not so much Trump’s message that resonates as his ability to make that message be heard.