Politics involves the heart and the mind, and in general the best politicians appeal to both. Then there’s Donald Trump. Jonathan Chait of New York magazine argues that Trump’s campaign is pretty close to mindless, but it seems that to many rank-and-file Republicans, that’s a feature rather than a bug.
“Outsiders have struggled to comprehend how Republican voters can attach themselves to an economic agenda so plainly at odds with their own interest, or whip themselves into a frenzy over a manufactured outrage,” wrote Chait in a Tuesday post. “Trump embodies that mysterious X factor that has eluded analysts of all sides…Trump is not the spokesman for an idea at all, but the representation of undifferentiated resentment.”
As Chait noted, the ideologically-squishy-yet-volcanic Trump has outdistanced doctrinaire right-wingers like Ted Cruz, even though Cruz “has mostly grasped the nature of conservative agita…But Trump has outdone him not just in celebrity appeal, but in calculated offensiveness.”
From Chait’s piece (bolding added):
The spasms of rage within the Republican base that have flared on and off throughout the Obama era have an ideological component and an emotional component. The two strands have been difficult to disentangle because the moments during which they’ve flared up have involved elements of both: the debt-ceiling fights, the shutdowns, the Obamacare repeals, the primary challenges against any member who had ever tried to legislate, the opposition to comprehensive immigration reform...The current moment of enthusiasm for Donald Trump is instructive because it pulls the strands apart. Trump’s appeal reflects, in nearly singular form, the nonideological component of Republican rage. He is the candidate of affect…
…Trump’s profile of [ideological] deviations is incomprehensibly vast. He has called himself pro-choice, endorsed single-payer health care, praised Hillary Clinton’s performance as secretary of State, donated to Democrats, and called for a huge onetime tax on existing wealth. It must be galling for the party regulars to prostrate themselves helplessly before the base, purging any hint of independent thought, only to watch a formerly pro-choice, libertine if not liberal, Democratic donor waltz into the lead.
The contrast with Ted Cruz is telling. Cruz has fashioned himself as the leader of the tea-party movement in Washington, and he has mostly grasped the nature of conservative agita. Republicans believe their leaders have done too little to fight the president…(Which is preposterous, of course: Republicans in Congress wouldn’t cooperate with Obama if Obama’s idea was to help Nancy Reagan cross a busy intersection.)
Cruz has the knack for self-destructive political theater, competitive Reagan idolatry, and purer-than-pure factional infighting. But Trump has outdone him not just in celebrity appeal, but in calculated offensiveness. Trump’s crude denunciation of Mexican immigrants as criminals made him the symbol of Republican nativism in the Latino community, yet this only enhanced his appeal…
The amorphous fervor of the right-wing base has stumped liberals as well as conservatives. Outsiders have struggled to comprehend how Republican voters can attach themselves to an economic agenda so plainly at odds with their own interest, or whip themselves into a frenzy over a manufactured outrage (whether it is Elián González, ACORN, death panels, or the legitimacy of Obama’s birth). Trump embodies that mysterious X factor that has eluded analysts of all sides...Trump is not the spokesman for an idea at all, but the representation of undifferentiated resentment.
