Maggie Gallagher:
The good news is that we have a GOP front-runner. The bad news is that his name is Donald Trump.
The latest ABC News poll shows Trump at 24 percent, eleven points ahead of number-two Walker, and twelve ahead of number-three Bush. It was taken, however, mostly before Trump’s McCain comments, which led even the normally apolitical Dr. Laura to denounce him, and to do so, pointedly, “as a vet’s mom.”
The just-released Public Policy Polling poll shows Trump hanging on to his front-running status, albeit shrunk to 19 percent, with Walker at 17 percent and Bush at 12 percent.
Together the three candidates who have never held elected office (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina) are pulling in one out of three Republican voters.
What accounts for the Trump bump?
The Left would like to believe it’s all that racism on the right bubbling to the surface. But the truth is something stranger and less predictable: This isn’t about ideology of any kind.
People are restless and hungry for a champion able and willing to fight. As my colleague Frank Cannon points out at The Pulse 2016, Republican voters are not anti-immigrant. Harry Enten’s data at Five Thirty Eight show that Trump is drawing his GOP supporters fairly equally from all sections of the party — from the Tea Party to the moderates.
We have no real clue what Trump would do as president, but we are sure he would do it loudly and aggressively, and in a rapidly changing world, having a big, strong alpha billionaire on your side seems to have a certain appeal.
He is our id, he doesn’t play by the rules, he gives out Lindsey Graham’s personal cell-phone number, he beats the media over the head and calls his fellow Republicans “losers.” He’s politically incorrect on steroids, and he’s not going to apologize for any of it, ever.
This of course has its downsides politically as well.
