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Saturday, February 27, 2016

What Rubio Is Up Against

David Weigel has a good article at the Washington Post about the ongoing battle between Rubio and Trump. The article includes videos of some recent ads being run against Trump on Rubio's behalf. What I want to focus on here, though, is how the article closes:

And the scale of Rubio’s challenge was evident just hours later, when a much larger crowd filed into the Cox Convention Center, half a mile away. A significant reeducation campaign would need to be implemented before they stopped thinking of Trump as a bar-brawling friend of the working man. Asked about the Rubio attacks, Trump supporters either said the endorsement of Trump by Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) overwhelmed them, that Rubio was irrelevant or that they hadn’t even watched the debate.

“Rubio won’t even win his home state,” said Mark Morris, 57. Trump, by contrast, reminded him of the Oscar-winning film “Gladiator,” and of Russell Crow's hero Maximus. “He survives the battle, and the emperor calls him in. The emperor says, ‘I need you to go to Rome.’ Maximus says, ‘I've never even been to Rome.’ He says, ‘That's why I want you to go. It’s corrupt there.’ That was so profound, so profound.”

Robert Jay, 28, a lineman who was kept from voting by an old felony conviction, did not watch the debate. Wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “white pride worldwide,” he explained that he bought it “as a response to Black Lives Matter,” and was happy that his wife, a onetime supporter of President Obama, was casting the family’s vote for Trump.

“He’s tough — I don’t know what Rubio is talking about — and he says if you attack us, we’re going to attack you,” Jay said. “We'’re going to be strong. And that’s important.”

Though Weigel probably chose these examples of Trump supporters in an attempt to make Trump and his supporters look bad, I suspect the examples Weigel cites are representative of much of the Trump movement. The part about Trump being like Maximus, going to corrupt Rome, is especially absurd. Given how ignorant, incompetent, and corrupt Trump is, what do you expect him to accomplish in his equivalent of Rome? Why prefer him to the far more knowledgeable, far more competent, and far less corrupt Rubio? It's doubtful that Trump would even make it to Rome. His electability is so bad that he'd probably get run over by the Clinton machine and have his innards splattered all over the road, or get drunk one night and fall off a cliff, long before he got anywhere near Rome.

Notice that the individual Weigel describes at the close of his article didn't watch the debate, and that individual says that he doesn't know what Rubio is talking about. He would know if he'd watched the debate or done other research.

A lot has been written about how Trump attracts people who don't have much of an education. And I suspect his supporters do less political research than the supporters of any other candidate.

I think it's anecdotally very reasonable to conclude the Trump coalition is generally poorly informed about current and historical events, lacking in political sophistication, and disaffected with the status quo in D.C.

Trump is a demagogue who is very easy to understand, and who makes outlandish claims that the disaffected can easily latch upon without much thought.

The interesting twist is the fact that he's beginning to be embraced by otherwise reasonable and responsible backers such as Christie which lends him undue credence.

I think the GOP establishment has waited too long to slow the momentum of the Trump Express, and now they're wetting themselves as they see the "Bridge Out Ahead" signage hurtling past them.

It's striking how some people are simply unable to think. They really don't know how to think. They are oblivious to the most obvious facts.

Take the notion that Trump is "tough". He was born with a platinum spoon in his mouth. He's the quintessential spoiled rich kid. An overgrown rich kid. Spoiled rotten. That isn't toughness. That's brattiness.

If you want to see "tough", visit the rehab unit at Walter Reed.

They judge Trump entirely by the image he projects on TV. They don't know the difference between reality and fantasy.