How Donald Trump Loses

By Ross Douthat

Jan 7, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/opinion/campaign-stops/how-donald-trump-loses.html?comments&_r=0#permid=17149708:17149928

There are two main reasons for the continued high poll standings for Trump:

First and foremost, Trump's success is the logical conclusion of a decades long strategy by Republicans to ruthlessly use fear, fueled by outright mis-information and propagandistic fear-mongering, to energize subgroups of the population to vote based on their worst instincts. This started with the Nixon "Southern Strategy" and has now culminated with the under-educated, economically despondent and hopeless middle-aged whites, who, with the exit of most manufacturing jobs, see no hope for the future.

There is some "divine justice" in seeing the hapless and increasingly desparate hand-wringing of the "Republican Establishment" trying to figure out a way to stop the floodwaters of the raging tea-party element they themselves heedlessly fostered for all these years. Their brainless slogans, like "The Government is the problem" are now coming home to roost.

Donald Trumps continued success also lies with the (news) media itself. Focused as they are on the sensational rather than the substantive and factual, they ignore the fact that virtually all of Trump's policy proposals, like building a wall and having Mexico pay for it, are complete nonsense - they merely obliquely refer to "fact checkers" and the none-sense "pants-on-fire" ratings, rather than engage in what used to be known as "journalism", by pinning Mr Trump down during the endless interviews with "facts".

Every time Trump makes a nonsense statement (Cruz is not a natural born citizen), instead of just reporting it (which, I suppose they must), followed by an embarrassed (because this nit-with is actually a "serious" candidate for Preident of the US) silence, each such statement is followed by hours of "analysis" and "expert panel discussions", giving Trump exactly what he wants - free media exposure.

Trump has recognized that the Madison Avenue adage that "any publicity is good publicity" applies not only to crappy products and Hollywood personalities, but, in his case, also to politicians.