http://www.weeklystandard.com/believing-the-unbelievable/article/2001620#.Vuvz-PiRl0c.twitterBelieving the UnbelievableMAR 28, 2016 |
By STEPHEN F. HAYES
Here’s the new line from Donald Trump's cheerleaders in the conservative media: A refusal to support Trump is a de facto endorsement of Hillary Clinton. It's an argument they're making out of necessity, not conviction, trying to use peer pressure to achieve the unanimity their previous exhortations failed to produce.
First, they asked us to believe Trump was a conservative. But that argument couldn't survive a cursory look at his background, and it falls apart further with nearly every policy pronouncement Trump makes. Then they said he was antiestablishment. But Trump financed the establishment of both parties for years and is now telling anyone who will listen that he intends to go establishment once he gets the Republican nomination. Then they asked us to look past his boorishness and promised he'd tone it down as the process went on. But Trump continued his subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) race-baiting and lately has encouraged violence against those who protest at his rallies. And when his supporters answered his call, he defended their actions and once again raised the possibility that he'd pay the legal fees of offenders. They promised he'd surround himself with the very best people. But Trump's campaign manager manhandled a female reporter, and when Trump was asked last week to make good on his promise to name his foreign policy advisers, he said: "I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things. . . . My primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff."
Trump is manifestly unqualified for the office he seeks. And despite the best efforts of Trump boosters to persuade people otherwise, many Republican primary voters remain unconvinced.
In the five contests held on March 15, the share of GOP primary voters who told pollsters flatly they would not support Trump if he becomes the nominee ranged from roughly a quarter to a third. When GOP voters were asked if they'd be "satisfied" with a Clinton vs. Trump matchup or if they'd look at supporting a third-party candidate, the numbers were staggering. In Missouri and Illinois, 43 percent of GOP primary voters said they'd "seriously consider voting for a third-party candidate." In Ohio, 42 percent said they were potential third-party voters. In North Carolina it was 39 percent, and in Florida, Trump's best state that day, 3 in 10 Republican primary voters said they'd seriously consider a third party.
As those numbers indicate, a large swath of the Republican primary electorate is either so stubbornly opposed to Trump that they will not vote for him or dissatisfied enough that they will consider alternatives outside of their party. Those percentages may diminish, but given the intensity of views about Trump, they may not come down that far. So much for the myth, eagerly propagated by Trump enthusiasts, that the battle for the GOP nomination is a fight between Donald Trump and the protectors of the "establishment" in Washington.
Having failed to ease concerns about Trump's character and convictions, his advocates are now making a different case: Trump will crush Hillary Clinton in a general election. It's a revealing tack—answering objections about temperament and philosophy with claims about electability. It's also highly dubious.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich says that with support from the "Republican establishment," Trump could turn his effort "into a Reagan campaign like 1980 and have the party win a stunning victory."
Stunning is one word for it. Ronald Reagan won 10 times the electoral votes of Jimmy Carter—489-49—in 1980, winning 55 percent of the votes cast for the two major-party candidates. Reagan won all but six states. The map of the 1980 election is almost entirely red, with a few spots of blue.
It was a landslide. Donald Trump matching that feat is, well, improbable.
Hillary Clinton has beaten Donald Trump in 43 of the past 49 head-to-head national polls. Sixty-seven percent of American voters have a negative view of Trump, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll out last week, and 56 percent say their view is "strongly" unfavorable. His favorable rating is at 30 percent, giving him a net favorable rating of negative 37. That's not only the lowest rating of any candidate in the 2016 race, it's among the lowest ratings seen in modern history.
Clinton has abysmal honest/trustworthy ratings; Trump's are lower—in some cases nearly twice as bad as Clinton's. In head-to-head comparisons with Trump, she's seen as a candidate who is more empathetic and relatable and who has the right experience for the job. And, importantly, the more voters have seen of him, the worse he's looked. His numbers in all of those categories have declined since September, in some cases markedly.
A separate Washington Post poll released in late January found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans say that the idea of a Trump presidency gives them "anxiety." For Clinton, it's 5 in 10. (Fifty-one percent say they're "very" anxious about Trump; 35 percent say the same of Clinton.)
Trump regularly claims he'll do well with Hispanic voters, the nation's fastest-growing voter bloc. But a Washington Post/Univision poll from February found that 8 in 10 Hispanic voters have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, with 7 in 10 having a very unfavorable view of him. In a head-to-head among Hispanic voters, Clinton beats Trump 73-16—some 13 points worse than Mitt Romney fared in 2012.
In 2012, Romney won 59 percent of the white vote and lost by five million votes. Trump is now polling below Romney's anemic 27 percent performance among Hispanics and below Romney's 17 percent among all nonwhites. That means Trump would have to win almost 70 percent among whites to gain a popular majority in a likely 2016 electorate. That's better than any Republican has ever performed in the history of exit polling.
Importantly, Trump's unpopularity isn't new. Although he's grown less acceptable to general election voters even as he's become better known, he never looked like a strong general election candidate.
Is it possible for Trump to win a general election against Hillary Clinton? Sure. She's an awful candidate who is under FBI investigation and stands a reasonable chance of being indicted or having one or more of her top aides charged with serious crimes. Trump enthusiasts rightly point out that his polling at the beginning of the GOP nominating process was also pretty grim. If Trump were to prevail, it would be one of the most dramatic reversals of electability prospects in recent memory. The closing argument from Trump enthusiasts isn't much of an argument at all. It's a wish.
In short, the same people who have asked us to overlook his cronyism, his liberalism, and his chauvinism now want us to disbelieve all the data on Trump's electability, and some of them would have us believe he wouldn't just win but would triumph in a landslide.
When that doesn't happen—and when Trump either loses or proves a disastrous president—they'll go looking for someone to blame.
They won't have to look far.
