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Trump masterful at saying what backers want to hear

Mon, Nov 30, 2015 (2 a.m.)

President Donald Trump? Surely I jest? I wish.

The billionaire presidential candidate has been riding atop the Republican primary polls for four months. He constantly defies the conventional rules of political etiquette. He reveals no more than a passing interest in facts. Yet the more he is criticized, the more he seems, like Godzilla, to grow bigger and stronger.

Trump’s disinterest in facts came into full bloom after the Paris terrorist attacks. He famously reignited an old and roundly debunked Internet conspiracy theory that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the World Trade Center’s collapse in 2001.

New Jersey officials and journalists — including the authors of a paragraph that Trump cited — have found no basis in fact for his assertion.

Even fellow GOP front-runner Ben Carson, after saying that he, too, had seen the Muslims celebrating on TV, decided that, no, he really hadn’t. The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” columnist, Glenn Kessler, awarded Trump “four Pinocchios,” his top rating for the biggest and most fact-free whoppers.

Trump is used to that. Kessler says he has given Trump more Pinocchios than any other candidate in this cycle.

Trump doesn’t care. The man who earlier characterized undocumented Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers went on to propose shutting down suspicious mosques, building a database of Muslims in America and perhaps requiring them to carry special identification showing their religion.

Un-American? You betcha. Yet his numbers remain remarkably buoyant, indicating nobody ever went broke by stoking public fears, anger and resentments. His rival candidates have virtually given up attacking him for anything, for all the good it doesn’t do.

Instead Trump’s audacity has enabled him to steer the rest of the Republican field further to the right, endangering the party’s chances of winning crucial swing voters next November, regardless of who wins their nomination.

With that in mind, Team Clinton privately has been slapping high-fives after every new Trump outrage. Considering how general elections ultimately are decided by moderate swing voters, Trump will be easier for Clinton to beat than, say, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich or some other similarly pragmatic conservative who cares about things such as facts.

Republicans may yet come to their senses and allow a more credible candidate to emerge. But I think there’s more going on here than a freak show engineered by a highly skilled and experienced media mogul and manipulator.

Like all good salesmen, Trump senses and has tapped into a deep, visceral fear among many Americans that the nation’s best days are behind it.

They see that great land disappearing behind a rising tide of previously marginalized people and cultures that don’t look like their traditional image of “American.”

Those of us who think America remains great and has its best days yet to come remain indifferent to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. Those who see the nation going down the tubes flock to Trump’s rallies and send him their small donations — as if he needed the money.

To test the nativism in Trump’s populist appeal, an Ipsos poll in September found that 45 percent of Democrats “don’t identify with what America has become,” compared with a thundering 72 percent of Republicans.

We’ve seen nativist and other hardcore reactionary attitudes rise before, usually in tough economic times. Trump’s popularity has grown as he has given voice to a widespread working-class and middle-class frustration that doesn’t always get picked up easily by pollsters.

He weathers storms of criticism and fact checkers by ignoring facts in favor of what Stephen Colbert famously labeled “truthiness,” a falsehood that “feels” truthful enough to be regarded as truth. If you cling with enough conviction to what people want to believe, as Trump amply demonstrates, they will believe it — and follow you anywhere.

That’s why I think it is time for everybody to start thinking of Trump not as a fluke but as a potential nominee and maybe even president. As new realities sink in, sensible Republicans in particular must ask themselves how well the party can survive in an alliance with people who care less about inclusion than exclusion.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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