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It’s not that these Trump disavowals are falling on deaf ears — it’s that they’re falling on the wrong ears

These repudiations mean something to Republican faithfuls, who recognize that a Trump nomination would be a disaster not simply because you don’t want a guy who conflated all Mexicans with rapists as the face of your party, but also because Trump’s corrosive power threatens the integrity of the party itself and undermines its capacity to unite behind a single candidate in the general election. Trump is bad for America, but he’s especially bad for the Republican Party. Trump’s critics aren’t wrong, but they also aren’t doing a very good job of convincing the guy in the Chiefs’ jersey and “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.

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It’s not that these Trump disavowals are falling on deaf ears — it’s that they’re falling on the wrong ears: either on those who would never vote Republican to begin with, never mind vote Trump, or on those who would vote GOP, and actually care what America’s conservative elites are saying. Trump’s advantage is that he seems to belong to no established class: he’s the straight-talking anti-politician who seems to speak directly to the less affluent, less educated, least likely to vote. Suffice to say his supporters aren’t reading Vox, or watching Last Week Tonight, or reading Commentary Magazine or National Review, for that matter. And they probably don’t care what Romney — the clean-cut, failed presidential candidate who complained about 47 per cent of the country being dependent on the government — has to say about their new chosen candidate, who will at least say what he thinks directly to the camera, instead of quietly at a $50,000 a plate fundraiser.

Needless to say, the anti-Trump echo chamber has quite capably convinced itself of the danger that is President Trump, but it’s having trouble penetrating talk-radio America, which is the America that’s carrying Trump’s clumsy presidential gambit on its shoulders. Ezra Klein, and John Oliver, and Mitt Romney don’t have much clout with that crowd, so it’s not surprising that Donald Trump still does.

National Post

Robyn Urback • rurback@nationalpost.com | robynurback