Trump's immigration theme taps into the anxieties of white working class Americans who feel that “the country is becoming a majority-minority country and the people who felt that they were in the ascendancy are now descending,” said Norm Ornstein, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It's not just racism but certainly race is a part of it. The feeling is, 'We're slipping and the people who are supposed to protect us are ignoring or defying us—they seduced and abandoned us.'”
Some voters see the political establishment's support for more immigration as a payoff to elites. Philip Koch, 64, an independent from Linn County, Iowa, and a Trump supporter, accused the GOP establishment for backing immigration reform for the sake of “cheap labor” for big business. “They’re doing what needs to be done for their donors. They’re selfish and they’re doing what people are paying them to do.” He likes Trump because “he’s not doing what the Republican mainstream are doing,” Koch said. “And I don’t want what the Republican mainstream are doing.”Protect Social Security, reject free trade
Trump also breaks with Republican elites who support free trade and want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Nearly all Republican candidates from Bush to Senator Marco Rubio are campaigning on cutting entitlements and many want to ink the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord. But Trump is joining forces with some on the left by campaigning to protect the retirement programs and assailing President Barack Obama's trade pact as a “disaster.” Nearly 80 percent of Republicans want to preserve Social Security and Medicare, according to a Reuters poll earlier this year.
“I think it is a mistake to evaluate his positions through a Washington prism of right versus left,” said Schmidt. “He has an issue set that meets the moment—that moment being a moment in time where trust has collapsed in all of these institutions.”
In addition, Trump was the first Republican candidate to call for closing the so-called carried-interest loophole that benefits hedge funds, venture capitalists, and private equity firms. “The hedge fund guys are getting away with murder,” he told CBS in August. His overall tax plan lowers rate for everyone, including the affluent.Foreign policy bravado
Trump has also forced the GOP to confront President George W. Bush's legacy. While Republicans years ago disowned Bush's big-spending domestic policies, Trump recently raised questions about his foreign policy and national security credentials.
After Bush said his brother “kept us safe,” Trump observed that the elder Bush brother was president on Sept. 11, 2001, the day terrorist attacks took down the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. Jeb Bush took umbrage, at which point Trump steered the conversation to the Iraq war.
Trump says it is a war that he has opposed—unlike most Republican party leaders in Washington but like most voters: 71 percent of Americans view the war as a mistake, with Republicans about evenly split, according to a 2014 poll.'I'll cut your legs off'
At the end of the day, some Republican elites still refuse to believe Trump can win the nomination—after all, the party hasn't picked a someone who never held elected office since in 1950s. But Ornstein notes that the Republican base is “so consumed with anger at their establishment” and that Trump's blustery attitude has a strong appeal to that sort of frustration. “For people who believe their own establishment has been basically humiliated and taken to the cleaners repeatedly by Barack Obama, a guy who says 'You tap me on the shoulders and I'll cut your legs off' gets attention,” he said.
Ornstein offered several scenarios that could cause Trump to fall, including losing Iowa and New Hampshire. “If he goes through a period where he's not the front-runner he could get frustrated and hang it up.” But he's not betting on a collapse, and he's not alone.