People believe that Trump is improving slowly but steadily at delivering the message that has reunited so many Republicans to his cause.
His standard stump speech now is essentially a greatest-hits version of the various riffs, attacks and asides that Trump has tried out on audiences since he got into the race in mid-June.
Watching Trump is equal to watching a stand-up comedian in terms of his process. Trump who happens to be a businessman-marketer, views his audiences as focus groups. He is always testing lines to see not only which work and which don’t but also how and when to deliver them for maximum impact.
GOP insiders were annoyed with the New York developer’s rise, but they also had every confidence that Trump would never seriously compete for their party’s nomination. That confidence is beginning to evaporate. The New York Times reported overnight that Republicans’ “irritation is giving way to panic” as Trump’s nomination begins to appear “plausible.”
Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections. But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try.
Some of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress and some of the party’s wealthiest and most generous donors have balked at trying to take down Mr. Trump because they fear a public feud with the insult-spewing media figure. Others warn that doing so might backfire at a time of soaring anger toward political insiders. That has led to a standoff of sorts: Almost everyone in the party’s upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it.
Party insiders are faced with a challenge for which there is no obvious solution: they see Trump as the least electable candidate, however polls represent Republican voters themselves see Trump as the most electable candidate. It’s not that the GOP base has decided electability is irrelevant; the trouble for the party is that many of these voters have already decided that Trump is their best bet for victory.
Where most GOP candidates want to prohibit Muslim refugee settlement in the U.S., Trump wants to prohibit Muslim immigration more broadly. Where other candidates want to step up deportation of unauthorized immigrants quite a lot, Trump wants to step it up even more.
With calculated and constant outrageousness, he dominates news coverage not just of the race for the Republican nomination but of the entire 2016 presidential competition.
As veteran political observer Larry Sabato says, “It’s Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump.” Trump and Sanders are dramatically different contenders offering polar opposite proposals for the United States. Yet each has attracted a passionate following.
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