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Why Donald Trump Won’t Fold: Polls and People Speak -- The New York Times

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  • Why Donald Trump Won’t Fold: Polls and People Speak -- The New York Times

    Why Donald Trump Won’t Fold: Polls and People Speak

    The New York Times

    Michael Barbaro, Nate Cohn and Jeremy W. Petersaug
    8/22/2015

    Excerpt:

    In the command centers of Republican presidential campaigns, aides have drawn comfort from the belief that Donald J. Trump’s dominance in the polls is a political summer fling, like Herman Cain in 2011 — an unsustainable boomlet dependent on megawatt celebrity, narrow appeal and unreliable surveys of Americans with a spotty record of actually voting in primaries.

    A growing body of evidence suggests that may be wishful thinking.

    A review of public polling, extensive interviews with a host of his supporters in two states and a new private survey that tracks voting records all point to the conclusion that Mr. Trump has built a broad, demographically and ideologically diverse coalition, constructed around personality, not substance, that bridges demographic and political divides. In doing so, he has effectively insulated himself from the consequences of startling statements that might instantly doom rival candidates.

    In poll after poll of Republicans, Mr. Trump leads among women, despite having used terms like “fat pigs” and “disgusting animals” to denigrate some of them. He leads among evangelical Christians, despite saying he had never had a reason to ask God for forgiveness. He leads among moderates and college-educated voters, despite a populist and anti-immigrant message thought to resonate most with conservatives and less-affluent voters. He leads among the most frequent, likely voters, even though his appeal is greatest among those with little history of voting.

    The unusual character of Mr. Trump’s coalition by no means guarantees his campaign will survive until next year’s primaries, let alone beyond. The diversity of his coalition could even be its undoing, if his previous support for liberal policies and donations to Democrats, for example, undermine his support among conservatives. And in the end, the polling suggests, Mr. Trump will run into a wall: Most Republicans do not support his candidacy and seem unlikely ever to do so. Even now, more say they definitely would not vote for him than say they support him.

    But the breadth of Mr. Trump’s coalition is surprising at a time of religious, ideological and geographic divisions in the Republican Party. It suggests he has the potential to outdo the flash-in-the-pan candidacies that roiled the last few Republican nominating contests. And it hints at the problem facing his competitors and the growing pressure on them to confront him, as several, like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, are starting to do.

    His support is not tethered to a single issue or sentiment: immigration, economic anxiety or an anti-establishment mood. Those factors may have created conditions for his candidacy to thrive, but his personality, celebrity and boldness, not merely his populism and policy stances, have let him take advantage of them.

    Tellingly, when asked to explain support for Mr. Trump in their own words, voters of varying backgrounds used much the same language, calling him “ballsy” and saying they admired that he “tells it like it is” and relished how he “isn’t politically correct.”

    .................................................. ........

    View the complete article, including images and video, at:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/us...peak.html?_r=0
    Last edited by bsteadman; 08-23-2015, 02:57 AM.
    B. Steadman

  • #2
    Donald Trump: Warrior male extraordinaire

    Exclusive: Kent G. Bailey, Ph.D., says such men have 'sustained the human race'

    WND

    Kent G. Bailey, Ph.D.
    8/21/2015

    Excerpt:

    In 1987, I published the first book in the field of Human Paleopsychology. This approach is premised on two basic assumptions: First, human beings have an ancient and rich evolutionary history, and second, that ancient history is thoroughly involved in everything we feel, think and do personally, politically and morally. According to famed neuroscientist Paul MacLean, the human brain is composed of a primeval reptilian segment at the lowest level, a mammalian segment at mid-level and a human or neocortical segment at the highest level. I added the notion that we human beings are constantly “regressing down” or “progressing up” MacLean’s triune brain system in the natural flow of behavior.

    The concept of “paleopolitics” is an obvious derivative of human paleopsychology. Indeed, we may easily infer that humans are, at base, political animals who obey more the law of the jungle than the pieties of high culture or the moral righteousness of the godly. Politics is selfish and egoistic, tribalistic and xenophobic to its core, and will readily go to war to win at any cost. It sells itself as “progressive” and of higher things yet most often operates in the gutters of human nature. Politics is not for fops, Pollyannas or the faint-hearted; it is internecine war by another name. It is the game of war, and only the true warriors win.

    In the past 60 years or so, America has become progressively feminized, and the archetypal warrior male has virtually disappeared. However, some tough ladies have stepped in to fill the vacuum including Phyllis Schlafly, Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin and many others. But how would any of these wonderful and strong women compete head-to-head in a private conference room with Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, or the mullahs and emirs of the volatile Middle East? We have seen how poorly our current girly-man-in-chief, Barack Obama, has dealt with the world of violent supermales out there. From the dawn of time, mutual respect among warrior males is the coin of the realm in these matters.

    Fox News’ Megyn Kelly seems to see herself as an alpha female capable of taking on any and all opposition – male or female. Yet, when set against the unadulterated masculine intellectual powers and cunning of Donald Trump, it was not a fair fight. She was overpowered to the point of speechlessness and had to take a 10-day vacation to lick her wounds. When the ladies operate within a protective penumbra of political correctness in a highly feminized culture of girly men, it is pretty easy to win intellectual pillow fights.

    In 2006, I published a column suggesting that Ann Coulter was the last of the “real men” on the intellectual right. I believe that Ann is the closest on the distaff side to the “in your face warrior hawk” profiled in that article. She may be the brightest and most courageous conservative intellectual in the country who can breathe fire when fire is needed – and that is most of the time. She has wonderfully set the stage for her male warrior counterpart, Donald Trump, who takes primal maleness to levels unseen for at least half a century. The everyday people of America long for strong warrior male leadership of the kind that has sustained the human race from the dawn of time.

    Donald Trump is the prototypical, archetypal and testosterone-driven alpha male who rules by the sheer force of his personality, imposing physique, quick wit, mastery of repartee and almost hypnotic control over his gathering masses of adoring followers. He is Attila to the Huns, Henry V to the outnumbered English army, Winston Churchill to desperate allied forces, and now our fearless leader against the pagan forces of progressivism and political correctness. He is the unapologetic, quintessential warrior male of yore capable of vanquishing any and all opposition in his way.

    .................................................. ............

    View the complete article, including image, at:

    http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/donald-tr...xtraordinaire/
    B. Steadman

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