It's Not Just Republicans

Interesting take on the Trump phenomenon and how his campaign is highlighting yuuge fissures between rank and file Republicans and the party leaders.

At the same time, the stubborn popularity of Mr. Trump, who defies Republican orthodoxy on issue after issue, shows how deeply the party's elites misjudged the faithfulness of rank-and-file Republicans to conservatism as defined in Washington think tanks and by the party's elected leaders.
The dichotomy is particularly vivid here in South Carolina, the most conservative state on the nominating calendar so far, where Mr. Trump holds a double-digit lead over his closest rivals in the latest polls.
"In a lot of senses Republicans have overestimated how much dedication to ideology was motivating their voters," said Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, a conservative online journal.

Of course, this mismatch between the Republican grassroots and the governing elite is also something Democrats overestimated as well. It's a pity Democrats didn't recognize and try to exploit it before Donald Trump came along. Even more to the point, electorally speaking, it highlights that the threat of the Republican bogeyman voter that will be in lockstep opposition to any Democratic appeal or proposal is more fiction than fact. Indeed, Democrats may have overestimated this electoral force more than Republicans. 

So, for instance, when Democrats in swing states like Manchin in W. Virginia, Tester in Montana, Heitkamp in ND, or Shaheen in NH beg off supporting planks of the party's legislative platform because they need to burnish their conservative bona fides - they're overstating their political challenge and not trying hard enough to persuade all the state's voters of the plan.