The k2p blog

The National Review, Weekly Standard, Red State are among the Republican, “establishment” media. They are supposed to be among the heavyweights in forming and reflecting Republican opinion. All of them have now come out against Donald Trump. Of course all the more liberal media (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Boston Globe, Politico …) came out heavily against Trump some time ago. The left-wing media (HuffPo, New Yorker, Slate …) went so far as first dismissing Trump, then trying to laugh him off but are now all reporting him -albeit reluctantly – as the embodiment of all that is “bad”. (I discount the brainless part of the US media represented by CNN and NBC and Fox News).

When the left and liberal media attacked Trump, it seemed to energise his Republican supporters. No establishment figure has appeared to be the white knight for the Republicans. As Trump’s support has survived and thrived, the Republican “establishment” media have become increasingly agitated. Initially they were quite circumspect in their criticisms but have now started a concerted attack on Trump.

But the curious thing is that even the attacks from the Republican side of the “establishment” seem to feed Trump’s support.

Reuters rolling poll 22nd January

Attacking Trump – from any direction – only seems to strengthen his support. That suggests that his support is coming from those who feel that their fears are completely unrepresented by any of the other candidates. The 2016 election is dominated, I think,  by the avoidance of worst fears and not by the meeting of aspirations.  It could well be that nobody will be able to take away from Trump’s support unless they can articulate the same disdain for establishment politics and political correctness that he does and address the worst fears that exist.

If no Republican is prepared to take away the ground he stands on, by occupying the same ground, then Trump could well be the Republican nominee. And if the Democratic candidate also ignores the ground he stands on, the result could be a very close run thing.

Tags: Donald Trump

This entry was posted on January 23, 2016 at 10:19 am and is filed under Behaviour, Politics, US. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.