Always Wrong, Never In Doubt: The Trump Edition

Shorter Megan McArdle: I'm using the same argument for Trump that I did for Clinton: once people get to know the candidate they will reject him due to his nasty rhetoric.

We're seeing a lot of people discover authoritarianism and its right wing manifestations at long last. They're reexamining their understanding of decision making in the political process by looking at the reasons behind the choices and sure enough, obedience to authority has a huge bearing on political choices as it does on most major personal choices.

Trump's followers don't vote for him for his policies or character. I hate to use such crude imagery but it's appropriate: he's jerking them off. Stroking, rising passionate rhetoric, comic release, you get the picture. Trump makes them feel good. Important, successful, hopeful, proud, powerful.

Dangerous.

They don't need to know him. He knows them and he gives them what they need.

McArdle's little pet #NeverTrump project failed before it began because McArdle is fighting the wrong battle using the wrong weapons on the wrong target. She thinks she's fighting to convince the littlebrains that they must and should vote for Rubio over Trump. She thinks she can educate them about Trump and then they will of course vote for Rubio because he is the inevitable winner once you eliminate the real one.

@danl2620 And the reason he will lose is not the issues. The reason he will lose is that he appalls people on a visceral level.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) March 2, 2016

McArdle doesn't understand people, which is not surprising because McArdle doesn't understand McArdle either. She is appalled by Trump therefore all right-thinking people will be appalled as well. If they are not it's because they don't know how awful Trump can be. Once they find out they'll abandon him. The leaders have the responsibility to guild the littlebrains and with responsibility comes power, the power to tell lies or make assumptions in your own favor. It's for their own good.

But Trump fans want to shout at me: He is winning! Ah yes. In low-turnout elections, a very small fraction of highly motivated supporters can swing things. At the moment, Donald Trump has collected about 3.3 million votes, with about a third of the states having voted.

These are not low-turnout elections.

Texas: "Election day voter turnout was so high that the county had to replenish GOP ballots in some precincts because they ran out early, according to Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins Poole."

Nevada: "The Nevada Republican Party reported Wednesday morning that more than 75,000 voters participated in the contest. While that might not seem like a stunning number in a state with a population of somewhere around three million, that turnout absolutely demolished the participation record from 2012, when only about 33,000 Republican voters showed up to caucus.
In fact, Donald Trump alone captured 34,531 votes in his near-landslide victory in the state, surpassing the total votes cast in the same contest four years ago."

South Carolina: " Republicans’ turnout streak continued, with GOP voters shattering their South Carolina primary record Saturday night.
With almost all precincts reporting, more than 737,000 votes had been counted. That was more than 20 percent higher than 2012, when about 603,000 voted."

This is McArdle's proof that voter turnout was low:
 

Share of voting-eligible population to have voted Trump:
IA: 2.0%
NH: 9.7%
SC: 6.5%
NV: 1.8%
A few passionate supporters can go a LONG way.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 28, 2016

She sees what she wants to see and disregards the rest, as the poet says. Which is why she thinks only an innocuous candidate can win the general election.

To win a general, he’s going to need another 55 million or so. And as I noted a few months back, the bigger the coalition you need, the more blandly inoffensive you have to be: the political equivalent of Applebee's, or Olive Garden, or TGI Fridays.

This time her proof is her post in which she states people don't elect radicals because people don't elect radicals.

And when we move beyond two people making a disastrous mistake, and try to get 100 million or so other people to jump on board, it's not merely unwise, but impossible. As Joe Scarborough remarked during the last round of oversubscribed GOP primaries, "The Republican Party does not nominate crazy." They may flirt with crazy. But when it's time to settle down, they pick the boring, middle-of-the-road candidate that they can bring home to the folks in Peoria ... and Atlanta ... and Cleveland ... and Portsmouth. So do the Democrats. Because ultimately, they want their guy in the Oval Office more than they want an authentic, election-losing alternative to the status quo.

Like many Americans, I enjoyed the Trump antics last night. There's nothing wrong with that. But there is something wrong with believing that this man might actually become president. I mean ... wake up, sheeple.

Her party is safe, boring, respectable and prosperous because she says it is. Cruz and Mario are Peoria candidates, the kind you take home to Mother. And the rest of the party? Republicans don't vote for crazy!

The newly elected chair of the Republican Party in the county that includes the Texas Capitol spent most of election night tweeting about former Gov. Rick Perry’s sexual orientation and former President Bill Clinton’s penis, and insisting that members of the Bush family should be in jail. 

He also found time to call Hillary Clinton an “angry bull dyke” and accuse his county vice chair of betraying the values of the Republican Party.

That's not flirting with crazy. It's taking it home, screwing it, and giving it a key to the front door.

Trump is not doing that. His strategy is all primary, no general. It clearly works … for certain values of the word “work,” which would probably not include “winning a general election” or “winning re-election before the folks with pitchforks descend to chase you out of town.”  

And indeed, that’s what we’re already seeing with Trump. He’s alienated a substantial chunk of the Republican base pretty badly, so badly they coalesced into the #NeverTrump swarm. That means he needs more independent voters or disaffected Democrats. Which his primary strategy makes him less likely to pick up.

This is an especially sad little lie. #NeverTrump is run by Liz Mair, Republican operative. McArdle is pulling the same astroturf scam as her dearly beloved; presenting an establishment project as grassroots. The base is Trump's lock, stock, and swastika; he has not chased them away. Mair is a libertarian who worked for the campaigns of  Scott Walker, John McCain and Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Carly Fiorina according to her bio. She is a Republican strategist and now her winning ideas are aimed at eliminating Trump.

It's interesting that McArdle is a libertarian and so is Mair, that McArdle supported Walker and Mair worked for him, and McArdle support's Mair's anti-Trump campaign. And that when Walker claimed to have the Koches' endorsement, Mair, who had eventually been fired by Walker, tweeted that she spoke to Koch people who said he didn't.

And now Mair and McArdle are both trying to get rid of Trump. They are ripples. Who is throwing the stone?

ADDED: Rubio cuts out the legs from under #NeverTrump.

ALSO ADDED:

Trump sure does move those voters to the polls, doesn’t he? https://t.co/YpWvjDg6Au

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) March 5, 2016