Yes, you heard me correctly: Donald Trump is hugely unpopular. Among registered voters, according to CNN, here is his partisan favorable/unfavorable breakdown among registered voters:
TOTAL: 36/59
REPUBLICANS: 68/29
INDEPENDENTS: 33/61
DEMOCRATS:16/80
Doesn't bode well for a hypothetical Trump general election candidacy, does it? Would there be - has there ever been - a Republican presidential nominee that goes out of his way to conform to Democrat stereotypes of Republicans than The Donald? And do you think that's any accident?
Here, as a comparative metric, are those same numbers for the GOP establishment's choice, Jeb Bush:
Almost identical overall, eighteen points better among Democrats (aka Bush isn't as "scary"), comparable among Indies, nine points worse among Republicans, which would appear to consist entirely of base hostility to the aforementioned "establishment". But in a general election context, both men would wind up in the same place: last. The difference, of course, being that Bush is a Bush is a Bush, incapable of being anything but what his breed is: moderate, squishy, RINO. Whereas Trump, as his track record indicates, will betray any promise, say whatever he must, to get what he wants. Which writes his general election strategy for him, and it's one Tea Partiers would most definitely not like: tack leftward. The Nixon strategy. Or pretty much what he's already doing on immigration. Again, the difference being that given the inroads among hardcore conservatives that Trump has bilked, those supporters would - human nature being what it is, not wanting to admit how badly they'd gotten swindled - either be rendered splutteringly speechless or would continue deluding themselves into believing that he hadn't betrayed them but was putting one over on the Left. Which is to say, reveling in and banking on the serial dishonesty and absence of character of their candidate.
Like I keep asking you, Tea Party Trumpsters, are you sure you want to ride this train? Or, to employ another old saying, "in for a penny, in for a pound".
As for Jeb, the interesting thing in his case is his weakness among what one would think would be his natural constituency:
TPers don't like him but don't totally hate him, libs pretty much loathe him, but moderates....can take him or leave him. Not that there isn't more than a little irony in squishes being squishy about a squish, but if Jeb Bush is the "inevitable" Republican nominee, his strength has got to come from "centrist" establishmentarians, and "barely underwater" isn't going to get him where he wants to go.
Symmetrically, here are the same numbers for Trump:
Again, Trump is more popular on the right, more unpopular on the left, which is in keeping with his campaign strategy and his naturally more polarizing personality. Although I have to say that his numbers among moderates being almost identical to Jeb's surprises me. Given their inherent temperment, I would think they'd be scarcely any less revulsed at Trump's antics and rhetoric than lefties, and yet they're as "meh" on him as they are Bush III. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? Other perhaps than that a significant number of moderates are favorable to Trump for his entertainment value alone.
Eeyore, as is his want, has a counterintuitive theory about that:
We tend to think of Trump and Bush as polar opposites, one the populist rager, the other the above-the-fray establishmentarian, but part of Trump’s base overlaps with Bush’s. Remember, according to nearly every poll, Trump’s leading not just among conservative Republicans but among moderates too. As Josh Barro said, Trump is in many ways a consummate moderate Republican; his style is angry and populist, which is typically associated with grassroots conservatism....but on [pretty much all] policies (like campaign-finance reform, [and healthcare and abortion and gun control and taxes and, yes, immigration, to cite several more] he’s a centrist [which is to say, a leftwingnut]. If you’re a “somewhat conservative” voter who’s leery of Cruz because he’s too dogmatic but also leery of Jeb because you’re tired of the Bushes, go figure that Trump might capture your imagination, at least for a while. [emphases added]
Or....Trump is telling his Tea Party supporters what they want to hear, in the way they want to hear it, but he doesn't mean a word of it.
The one and only thing setting Trump and Bush apart from the rest of the field? Name recognition. They're both ninety-plus in that regard, while no other candidate is above the low to mid fifties. And that is the hope that still exists in this race, that a Cruz or a Jindal or a Fiorina or, most to the point, Scott Walker, can emerge from this thundering herd and, with all that potential upside, zoom past their two notorious rivals who are pretty much bumping up against their polling ceilings, and give the GOP a fighting chance against Hillary (or whomever).
After which Trump will go Ross Perot and we'll have a the next huge problem on our hands right on schedule. But we'll have to drive off that bridge when we come to it.
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