In the race to the right, yesterday’s conservatives can’t keep up. John Boehner, a right-wing rebel in the House 20 years ago, has been purged as speaker by the GOP’s new hardliners. Kasich, another House rebel from the Boehner era, is now ridiculed in the presidential primaries as a liberal. Cruz and Rubio accuse each other, correctly, of having switched positions on immigration. Both men have shifted to the right—Rubio turning against illegal immigrants, Cruz turning against legal ones—in pursuit of angry white voters.
When you run a party this way, chasing after your most radical constituents—in Republican parlance, leading from behind—you shouldn’t be surprised to find that the audience you’ve cultivated doesn’t match your original principles.
National Review’s Jan. 21 editorial, “
Against Trump,” is eloquent but far too late. Today’s Republican electorate doesn’t belong to
National Review. It belongs to Trump.
Trump is leading almost every national and statewide Republican poll. Together, he and Cruz are drawing the support of 60 percent of Republicans in the latest
CNN/ORC poll, 58 percent in the
ABC News/Washington Post poll, 54 percent in the
Fox News poll, and 53 percent in the
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. In Iowa, Trump and Cruz are splitting
60 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. In New Hampshire, they control
47 percent of the vote. In South Carolina, they’re drawing
61 percent.
Even if all the establishment candidates pooled their support, they wouldn’t win. Together, Rubio, Bush, Christie, and Kasich are attracting only 18 percent of the Republican vote in the
CNN/ORC poll, 22 percent in the
ABC/Post poll, and 22 percent in the
Fox News poll. The NBC/
Journal poll found that even if the Republican field narrowed to Trump, Cruz, and Rubio, Rubio would
still finish last by 5 percentage points. With Cruz removed, Trump would still beat Rubio, 52 percent to 45 percent.
Trump’s grip on this Republican electorate isn’t superficial. It’s based on shared attitudes. In the CNN/ORC poll, 34 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners picked Trump as the candidate who “best represents the values of Republicans like yourself.” Twenty-five percent picked Cruz; only 18 percent picked Rubio, Bush, Christie, or Kasich. Many surveys show that Republicans
share Trump’s distrust of Muslims and his willingness to discriminate against them. In an
analysis of the ABC/
Post data, pollster Gary Langer found that “anti-immigrant views” and “interest in a candidate from outside the political establishment” were “the single strongest independent predictors of supporting Trump vs. any of his opponents.” These views now dominate the GOP.
The ABC/
Post poll asked: “Overall, do you think immigrants from other countries mainly strengthen or mainly weaken American society?” Republicans and Republican leaners, by a margin of 50 percent to 38 percent, said immigrants weaken America. The rest of the sample, by a ratio of more than 2 to 1, said the opposite. The poll asked: “Would you like the next president to be someone who has experience in how the political system works, or someone from outside the existing political establishment?” Republicans and Republican leaners, by a margin of 54 percent to 42 percent, preferred an outsider. The rest of the sample, by a ratio of more than 3 to 1, preferred experience. The poll asked whether “America’s best days are ahead of it or behind it.” A 49 percent plurality of Republicans and Republican leaners said the country’s best days are behind it. The rest of the sample, by a ratio of 2 to 1, said the country’s best days lay ahead.
What these polls illustrate is a party adrift from America. By chasing the right and abandoning the middle, Republican politicians have developed a constituency that turns out in midterm elections and believes it’s entitled to control the country but
doesn’t think like the rest of the population. Trump is on course to win the Republican presidential nomination and then lose the general election precisely because he mirrors this constituency. The crisis for leaders of the Republican establishment isn’t that Trump doesn’t represent their party. It’s that he does.
