Posted on 01/22/2016 6:33:51 AM PST by Citizen Zed
How is Donald Trump doing it? He leads the national, Iowa, and New Hampshire GOP presidential polls. He is the most likely Republican nominee, according to betting markets. He is also picking up key support on the religious right, his supposed area of electoral weakness. And now even the party's donors are beginning to wrap their noodles around the possibility that Trump may be the last candidate left standing. Also, Sarah Palin!
There are lots of theories and explanations for Trump's shocking surge. Some are simple: He is an outsider. He tells it like it is. America has become an idiocracy. And some are sophisticated, like that smartly laid out by The Week's Michael Brendan Dougherty, who argues a hollowed-out, despairing white middle-class has long yearned for a white knight to fight for it against the global economic elite.
Maybe all those explanations are necessary to fully understand the Trump phenomenon. But they may not be sufficient without one more, one that is both simple and sophisticated. The simple part: Trump is just a really, really good salesman. Or, as the campaign pros put it, a "political athlete." The sophisticated part is how Trump is making that sale to voters. Consider the possibility that Trump -- a billionaire businessman with an Ivy League MBA and a best-selling author on dealmaking -- isn't some blithering idiot blurting out populist nonsense. Instead, perhaps Trump is calculatedly using tried-and-true influencing and negotiating techniques -- ones used by persuaders from carnival hypnotists to high-profile motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins -- to literally mesmerize the GOP.
For instance, recall the debate over Trump's net worth. He claimed a fortune of $10 billion when he released his financial disclosure statement last summer. Media analysts jumped to disagree. Forbes figured his wealth at more like $4 billion, while Bloomberg tallied it at $2.9 billion. But by coming out with a big, round, outrageous number, Trump employed a well-known cognitive bias called "anchoring" where people tend to rely on the first information they hear when making a decision. Classic negotiator technique. And by sparking a debate over whether his net worth was a few billion bucks or several multiples higher, Trump cemented in our collective mind that he was a tremendously successful businessman. He made us "think past the sale," like when a car salesperson asks if you want that new Toyota Camry in Midnight Black or Blue Crush Metallic. The purchase decision is already locked in.
Or think about when Trump says, "We're going to take out country back." The lack of detail is what makes it powerful. Who took America away? Was it illegal immigrants? The Washington Cartel? Wall Street? Letting people fill in the blanks themselves is what hypnotists do. ("Now imagine yourself in a place of total security and serenity.")
And remember when Trump called for a ban on all Muslim immigrants "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on"? The language was kind of dopey but the statement was a brilliant bit of persuasion. While other candidates were discussing the boring details of immigration reform, Trump focused on something the average voter could understand and agree with. It is a technique that Trump used again when attacking Ted Cruz on his citizenship. Instead of arguing legal precedent, Trump instead focused on a more macro concern: Not wanting the party's nominee or country's eventual president to get bogged down in a distracting legal controversy. Seems sort of commonsensical, right?
These and other of Trump's "master persuader" tricks and techniques -- including engineered insults like calling Jeb Bush "low energy" -- have been outlined and explained since last summer in a series of prescient blog posts by cartoonist Scott Adams. Best known as creator of the Dilbert comic strip, Adams is also a Berkeley MBA and trained hypnotist. While many analysts dismiss Trump as an idiot clown benefiting from America's anxious id, Adams sees Trump as a savvy communicator "highly trained in the art of persuasion [who] literally wrote the book on it ...There is a reason Trump's message penetrates the crowd noise" while the other candidates flounder.
Adams too points out that Trump is friends with Robbins, someone deeply studied in the art of persuasion and making emotional connections, including hypnotic techniques. Also keep in mind that while Adams may not be be a member of the national pundit corp, he has been dead on in forecasting the seemingly inexorable rise of Trump, including Trump's emerging acceptance from the GOP establishment.
Of course, maybe Adams is giving Trump more credit here than he deserves. Maybe Trump is just, as Adams puts it, a "lucky Hitler." The wrong man at the right time to gain power. But if Adams is right, Trump is intentionally playing a different game than his rivals are, with their tired 30-second ads and think-tank approved policy agendas. And he's winning that game by a landslide right now -- which, by the way, is what Adams is predicting for November 2016.
>>I wondered why my eyes were heavy and I was feeling sleepy.<< Literally or figuratively? ;o)
So if he believes in Pro-America, pro-business, why does he have his clothing line made in Mexico and China?
There will always be a proportion of the population that is drawn to charismatic leaders. It has nothing to do with intelligence or sophistication. It has ore to do with suggestibility, which we know varies across the population.
That, and the fact that yes Trump does speak the otherwise unheard thoughts of a vast stretch of the people.
maybe because the other conservative candidates are so bad or they lack any charisma
These authors are amazing. They make themselves feel important by claiming they can predict what makes Trump tick. I bet they will be doing this forever, yet never reach a consensus because of what he has said, “I am unpredictable,”
LOL! We are so hypnotized. :-)
If he wanted to do differently, he’d probably need to open up his own custom clothing factory. Which he could do; he is rich enough.
So Trump is not perfect; so sue him.
Have you studied "The Prince"?
I have.
Trump is the Prince if Machiavelli was successful at convincing The Prince of the merit of all of his suggestions and he proceeded to implement them.
Don't give the impression that you need one side or the other. Keep your options open just in case someone comes along with a better deal.
That’s exactly my problem. He says something but his record shows that his actions don’t mesh with what he says and it doesn’t matter to the people who are caught up in this cult of personality he has.
That’s an awfully generalized statement and the few times I have seen particulars put to this concern, there was a visible reason for the discrepancy that did not seem to pose a hazard in the current context.
I think the worse problem will be a paucity of people willing to step up into the negotiations Trump proposes, resulting in an agenda that is weaker than it needs to be.
Well here is where what we call conservatives need to respect Donald’s position, if not Donald, enough to step up into his dealmaking process. Otherwise the Donald agenda is going to be weak on what we call conservative principles.
Cruz may be a more conventional conservative, but Cruz’s ability to deliver is in doubt.
Thread of the week. That is why most don’t support him. His heavy handed “my way or the highway” would result in the United States being stinted for another 4 to 8 years. I want a President of action. Trump will be good in Terrorism, the wall, immigration and ISIS. That is what is important right now. If we don’t get those 4 things fixed then all the conservative issues won’t matter because we will be dead literally.
For the list
There is no salvation IN politics... but there could be a salvation OF politics. That would be from a school too, but it would have to be a heavenly school, not an earthly one.
This is what I have said earlier about people who support Donald Trump.
Trump supports DeBlasio, they defend it. Trump invites Clinton to his wedding, they defend it. Trump and his son both acknowledge he supports touchback amnesty, they defend it. He supports judges that advocate for partial-birth abortion and they defend it. He says Cruz is worse than Hilary, they defend it. He says he will bring jobs back to America, meanwhile he imports foreign workers on visa’s and manufactures his clothing line items in Mexico and China, but they defend it.
They have a picture of what he is in their minds and the facts just don’t seem to matter.
I literally had a Trump supporter, ostensibly a conservative, defend his sister’s ruling on partial birth abortion, that it is a right guaranteed in the Constitution.
The same people who lambasted Cruz’s wife for working at Goldman Sachs are ok with Trump owning part of Goldman Sachs.
He does not hold dear anything that is written down as long-held truths.
It is all negotiable.
Whatever The Donald wants The Donald should get whether or not it is really good for us and our posterity.
As long as a deal has been made and The Donald had a hand in the deal. And his deal gets the upper hand.
Then let's go with the guy who wrote the best book in the world next to the Bible.
Well what one person might call a problem, another might call an opportunity.
Given that there isn’t much that looks like it can be done to quash the Trump phenomenon, is there some way it can be steered? The answer is a clear and obvious yes. And it looks like the steering wheel is being offered to the headliner of the Constitution, i.e. “We The People.”
God may in fact be giving America the gift it was getting too lazy to want.
Though your tagline does reveal your post as sarcasm, do not be surprised if you get an “Amen” from some Trump supporters.
I have posited the presidency may GET Ted Cruz — in the form of a Trump advisor.
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