Site Meter

Friday, November 13, 2015

Second Comment on one Morning Plum Post by Greg Sargent

Extreme editing

GOP consultant Charlie Black explains what might stop Trump:

Black said he was briefed on the findings of two recent private focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire that showed these voters knew little about his policy views beyond immigration.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a “Contract With America II” that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax. [It] also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling.

That is one Republican argues that Trump will be stopped, because people don't know about his policy proposals, are thinking of only some issues, and responding to pollsters based on a general impression not policy issues and other Republicans propose cutting Social Security, Medicare and corporate tax rates. The case for Republican optimism is that people will learn the facts and decide whether to vote for Trump based on his policy proposals and then we can go back to getting the votes of people who want to keep the government's hands off of their Medicare and get back to fighting to cut Medicare.

As noted by many (including of course Paul Krugman) the establishment Republican case against fear of Trump and Carson is that they are obviously crazy. This is true, but so are all Republicans. They have to assume that voters will pay attention to Trump and Carson's policy proposals but not to the policy proposals of any other Republicans.

They are not only relying on voter ignorance but on selective voter ignorance. This leads me to conclude that the chance that they are guessing right and will win the next election is ... terrifyingly high.

No comments: