Douglas Eckberg
Nov 5 · 2 min read

This is a pretty uninformed piece that takes the usual delight in smacking down Republicans but shows little understanding of the nature of party politics.

Where is the evidence that Fox News and Donald Trump control Republicans? For goodness sake, Trump hasn’t the organizational abilities or the discipline to control the masses. And Fox News (the infotainment side, not the serious news side, which has never been Trumpist) went over to Trump after they discovered how much self-described Republicans supported him. It lost on the Megyn Kelly issue and discovered how fragile it was.

Why do Republicans support him so much? Good question, which a lot of people have given different answers to. One major conservative pundit, Jonah Goldberg (who like the bulk of people at National Review is decidedly not a Trumpist) suggests it’s because he is lucky in his choice of enemies. Democrats argue that it’s because they’re all a bunch of simple-minded bigots. Whatever. The fact remains that for whatever reasons ordinary Republicans support him overwhelmingly. And therein lies the power of party politics.

Republicans have been running scared ever since 2010, when mainstream Republicans were primaried by Tea Party candidates— and lost. As long as Trump maintains his devotion among Republican voters, the party won’t cross him. Why take the chance on the general election and not even make it that far? So their strategy seems to be to hang together, rather than hanging separately

Trump appears to be losing Independents, right before our eyes. If Republicans start to peel away, then we might see more defections. If they can defect en masse, they might do it, but that point isn’t here yet.

BTW — it isn’t only anonymous Progressives at New York Mag who think Trump might be impeached and convicted. Peggy Noonan, conservative columnist at the Wall Street Journal (and also no Trumpist) thinks it could happen — and she signs her name to it.

    Douglas Eckberg

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