Trump's base is as defiant as he is in the face of media criticism

NBC News:
The American tradition is not deference to authority; it's defiance of authority, even when the cause is hopeless. Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset once wrote that the United States was, in fact, peopled by “runaways from authority” — settlers seeking freedom from abusive governments and members of dissenting religions seeking freedom from established churches.

Defiance is Donald J. Trump's signature attitude; it was the defining characteristic of the 2016 Trump campaign. Trump defied the political establishment, the news media, conventional wisdom, common decency, former President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and even the pope.

Trump's supporters admire his defiance, which they see as fearlessness. They share his contempt for the establishment, the news media, educated elites and the norms of political correctness, all of which helps explain why Trump's base is sticking with him now that he has antagonized the entire national establishment.

In the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, Trump's job approval rating is down to 38 percent, but 81 percent of Republicans are standing by their president. “We have, actually, great unity in the Republican Party,” Trump boasted.

The Republican Party is now the Trump party: “There is zero appetite for the ‘Never Trump’ movement in the Republican Party of today,” an adviser to a pro-Trump super PAC told the New York Times. “The party is now defined by President Trump and his movement.”

Are Republican voters dismayed by the indictments coming from the special counsel? Not at all. To Trump and to his base, special counsel Robert Mueller represents the national establishment passing judgment on the president.

Trump's response to the investigation? Defiance: “Why aren't Crooked Hillary and the Dems the focus?” Trump tweeted. And now, some Republican lawmakers are pressuring the Justice Department to name a second special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Such a move would instantly destroy the norm, established after the Watergate scandal, that the White House should never use law enforcement agencies to go after political enemies.
...
There is more.

Republicans are also sticking with him on tax cuts.  Democrats and teh media appear to have misjudged the Trump voters yet again.  Those voters are insulted by the suggestion that they are dupes of a Putin plot.  The Trump voter is not crazy or evil.  They just see Democrat policies as a failure and as sops to special interests.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more