Jonathan Chait: How Donald Trump Outsmarted George Will: "Conservative intellectuals took it as a given that Trump was alien to conservatism... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)
...But it is not only conservative leaders like Ryan (and Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) who have fallen behind Trump, but the followers, too.... Three-quarters of conservative Republicans believe Trump represents their party’s core principles, while only half of moderate and liberal Republicans agree.... Among the rank and file, enthusiasm for Trump burns hot.... Joe Heck and Jason Chaffetz, who disendorsed Trump, have come crawling back. George P. Bush has declared his support... which is like Marty McFly voting for Biff Tannen. Almost everybody who craves a future in Republican politics has concluded that their career depends on endorsing Trump....
You can’t heal an illness you’ve diagnosed improperly.... Because... Trump proved to the party base he was one of them through his racism, sexism, and blunt nationalism. Those impulses are the essence of conservative political identity.... The most important analytical failure of the anti-Trump conservatives is their blindness to the centrality of white racial backlash....
Trump is not a committed ideologue but a grifter who decided to use their voters for his own ends. Trump grasped from the outset that the birther issue gave him a connection to the Republican electorate. The conservative intelligentsia ignored the birthers, the freaks, and the transparent racists because they were embarrassing. It was far more flattering and heroic to imagine the whole thing was about the Constitution. The con artist swindled the perfect mark.
