Author: Paul Price, Jr. , The London Globalist Frequent Contributor

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s speech urging Americans not to “accept ugliness as the norm” was a sharp contrast to demands by his party’s presidential nomination frontrunners, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, that Muslims be monitored and barred from entering America. Popularity for “Lyin’ Ted” and “The Donald” despite this vitriol has confounded many, including NY Times columnist David Brooks, who admitted, “I need to change the way I do my job if I’m going to report accurately on this country.” Americans like Mr. Brooks shouldn’t be surprised that they’re on the doorstep of a Trump Administration. After all, the Trump phenomenon is the next logical step in the development of America’s anti-government movement, whose anger at social change and economic turmoil has been repeatedly demonstrated by the success of anti-government candidates at the voting booths.

The context of the Trump phenomenon

The recent successes of anti-government candidates provided clear indications that America’s anti-government coalition was growing. It began in 2010, when the conservative Tea Party protest movement won forty-five congressional seats by attacking big government, Obamacare, and immigration. Then in the 2012 Republican presidential race, Tea Partiers Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, and Newt Gingrich gained widespread support and forced establishment-pick Mitt Romney into veering right and spending millions of dollars on attack ads. After Republican’s 2012 failure, political brinksmanship engulfed Washington as Congressional Republicans shut down the government and almost defaulted Washington on its debt. Finally, there was the birth of the ideologically uncompromising House Freedom Caucus, which ousted Speaker John Boehner for collaborating with Democrats to pass legislation.

This support for anti-government candidates has been fuelled by social and economic changes. Throughout this political turmoil, an African American accused of being a lying, Islamic, Kenyan communist has presided over a cultural revolution: Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street forced inequality and race into the public discourse, marriage equality was constitutionalized and LGBT+ rights are increasingly mainstream, and decades of immigration have ensured that America will soon have no majority skin color. This social anxiety was compounded by economic devastation. Although the economy is recovering from the Great Recession, Thomas Edsall explains, lower and middle class Americans have suffered from decades of stagnating wages as the middle class has been hollowed out.  Gallup has found this economic dislocation to be pivotal to Trump’s success with sixty-four percent of Republicans believing Trump would “be best on jobs and economy” out of the Republican candidates.

Digging their own grave

Trump supporters’ anger partly comes from democratic action continually failing them. Republican voters have seen no progress despite years of electing Republican politicians promising to reverse the aforementioned social changes, suppress America’s PC culture, overturn Obamacare, and shrink the federal deficit. Republican politicians further failed their voters, Democrats argue, by advocating for free market economic reforms beneficial to their donors but detrimental to their base, whose votes they secured with socially conservative policies. Congressional Republican’s failure to represent their base explains why Gallup found that only thirteen percent of Republican voters approve of Congress. However, the blame can’t be placed solely on Republicans. Democrats are also disgusted with Congress, and many former Democratic voters also support Trump. This explains why Trump does better in open primaries where members of both parties can vote in either election.

If we combine these circumstances, the notion of a successful protest candidate isn’t absurd. Statistics whiz Nate Silver neatly summed up the Republican Party’s situation by saying, “If you were on the verge of a disaster ten times and avoided each one, that’s not a sign you miraculously avoided disaster. It’s a sign that sooner or later…you’re going to get in a crash.”

Understanding Trump’s support

 Many Americans are understandably appalled by Trump’s popularity. However, Trump supporters aren’t going away, and rejecting the legitimacy of their complaints will entrench America in its unproductive status quo. Understanding Trumpism is essential. Profiles of Trump supporters show Americans who have suffered from economic dislocation and believe that immigrants are endangering innocent Americans, driving down wages, and costing them their jobs. Often single issue voters, they’ll disregard unsavory remarks to elect someone who symbolizes success, recognizes their problems, and is different from past politicians who have failed them. Polls support this logic: voters cited Trump’s business success, his outspokenness, and his inexperience in politics as the biggest reasons for their support.

These fervent supporters have forced #NeverTrump Republicans into action. Studies show Republicans have spent over sixty-three million dollars to take down Trump. This money seems to be working, polls show fewer numbers of late-deciders are voting for Trump. However, it seems Republicans held their fire for too long. Initially, they disregarded Trump as a real threat, and refrained from attacks to avoid alienating his supporters, thereby preserving their chances of being Trump supporters’ second choice. Republicans have now reversed tactics, but their constant attacks seem futile. Their most common attacks frame Trump as a fake conservative, as unfit to govern, and as a failed businessman. But these have fallen on deaf ears because they come from the very people that the Trump movement is built on rebelling against: politicians.

Despite the seemingly hopeless #NeverTrump movement and the perception of inevitability enveloping the demagogue’s campaign, Americans shouldn’t despair. Relatively few Americans actually support the demagogue. In early March, Gallup found Trump had a sixty-six percent unfavorable rating among eligible voters. And out of the one-hundred million eligible voters in the twenty-six states which have held elections for both parties before March 25^th, less than eight million voted for Trump. Furthermore, primary voters are statistically the most ideologically polarized. Therefore, it’s logical that a disproportionate number of Trump supporters participate in primaries: they’re the most passionate.

An existential threat?

Politicians and pundits didn’t predict Trump’s rise because they failed to consider recent political, economic, and social discord. And although admirable, Speaker Ryan’s call for unity and idea-based governance only further exposed the contradictions between the desires of the Republican elite and the desires of the Republican voter base. How Republicans address these contradictions will determine whether Trump becomes an existential threat to the Republican Party.