In ways large and small, with policy and with personality, billionaire Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is forcing his party's establishment to confront the vast divide between party leaders and the voters who, according to nearly every poll for months, have wanted him to carry their torch to the White House.
A prevailing narrative is that Trump is leading in the polls by appealing to the far right. That's an oversimplification. Trump is offering Republicans something no other candidate can: An insider's knowledge of the elite combined with a mischievous determination to upend it and an unorthodox set of policy prescriptions—running the gamut from immigration to campaign finance to Social Security—that aim to achieve that goal. In this year's contest for the Republican nomination, that platform has proven to have staying power.
“We’re all out there like little bee workers trying to get these people elected, and then nothing changes!” said Fay Schall, a 63-year-old conservative Republican from O'Brian County, Iowa. A Trump supporter, she said the real estate tycoon articulates the frustration voters feel, in part because he doesn't worry about being politically correct. “People are tired of it,” she said. “I think that’s the nerve that Trump is hitting. Everybody is tired of being trampled on. I think that’s what’s resonating.”
The fact that Trump is a billionaire enhances his credibility as the standard-bearer of the populist moment, suggests Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who ran John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. “Trump is essentially saying there's one set of rules for people like you and another set for people like me—I've played the game, I've won at the game and now I'm going to be fighting on your side,” he said.Campaign finance 'scam'
Ahead of the third Republican debate in Boulder, Colorado, on Wednesday, the real estate mogul is pounding on a theme that has also been picked up by Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: The influence of the wealthy on politics.
After calling super-PACs a “scam” and disavowing the ones backing him (none of which have reported receipts so far to the Federal Election Commission, making it impossible to determine whether Trump is making much of a sacrifice), Trump is urging his competitors to do the same. “All Presidential candidates should immediately disavow their super-PACs. They're not only breaking the spirit of the law but the law itself,” he tweeted on Monday.
For months he has characterized his Republican rivals as puppets of the wealthy donors they depend on, zeroing in first on Jeb Bush, who is supported by a super-PAC that had nearly $100 million cash on hand as of its most recent filing with the FEC, and more recently on Ben Carson, the beneficiary of several super-PACs.
Led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Republicans in Congress have consistently opposed limits on political donations, arguing that it's a form of free speech. But that doesn't reflect the views of the party's rank-and-file. A whopping 80 percent of Republicans believe money has “too much” influence in politics while 85 percent say politicians mostly or sometimes promote policies to help their donors, according to a New York Times poll in June. Immigration crackdown
On immigration, Trump has exposed another gap between the party establishment and voters. While Republican politicians—including arch-conservative presidential candidate Ted Cruz—want to increase legal immigration, 67 percent of Republicans want to decrease immigration flows and 63 percent view immigrants as a burden, according to surveys by the Pew Research Institute. Trump caught fire over the summer with incendiary rhetoric about illegal immigration from Mexico and by being the first to call for deporting an estimated 11 million people now living in the U.S. illegally.
Schmidt calls Trump's remarks “intemperate” but acknowledges that the insurgent candidate's willingness to own his political incorrectness enhances his appeal. In the face of advertisers bolting and searing criticism, “does Donald Trump back down? No. Donald Trump doubles down,” Schmidt said. “That's the proof point—he's too rich, he's too wealthy to be bought off, unlike all these politicians who've been bought and sold by the billionaires. That is the populist fuel that is driving his campaign.”