At the Washington Post, Dan Drezner serves up “My very peculiar and speculative theory of why the GOP has not stopped Donald Trump”, receiving an approving nod from the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, “How the GOP Failed To Stop Trump”. Drezner’s take: “My hypothesis is that GOP decision-makers also read the same analyses [from political scientists and pollsters arguing that Trump’s high negatives and lack of establishment support meant he was doomed] and concluded that they did not need to do anything to stop Trump.” In other words, self-important elites inside the Beltway and out, and inside the Republican Party and out, outsmarted themselves.
I have another theory. My theory is that Trump is winning because he is telling Republicans what they want to hear: that foreigners are welfare-loving, job-stealing rapists and terrorists who ought to be kicked out of the country. All of Trump’s rivals are arguing that they hate immigrants at least as much as Trump does, if not more. Even Jeb “Mr. Compassion” Bush got caught up in an exceedingly ugly rap about “anchor babies,” ultimately “explaining” that he only meant those Asian bitches, not those Mexican bitches.
It isn’t the Republican elites who have their hands dirty, Dan and Daniel. It’s the Republican masses.
