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.
Cruz in principle has what it takes to do this. If you got gospel, you got it all. Whether he’s well versed in that, is another story. Some people let themselves be saved and that is just about it.
In the vacuum of something better, Trump and his clumsy if sometimes impractical approaches to common sense are the best we have.
Beautiful!
Oh... and if Cruz is under a difficult cloud of controversy, perhaps throwing support (both public and private) to Trump might make the most sense. He could be the Daniel to Trump’s Nebuchadnezzar.
For me, it’s as simple as this: Trump is not a member of the uni-party!
He’s got a B.A. from Wharton, NOT an MBA.
They are all deal-makers and have had a stranglehold on the Republican base since Ronald Reagan left office.
They don't want their fiefdom upset in the least.
Trump on Cruz: You can't make deals with that guy.
If you want the Republican deal-making to continue vote for Trump.
Nominally GOP, but very much with an unherdable-cat streak in him.
...Trump and his clumsy if sometimes impractical approaches to common sense are the best we have....
Always on time or ahead of schedule. And under budget. No more blowing 1.8 billion on a 300 million Denver Vererans hospital whose construction is running 10 years behind.
Better than that, Trump says use that money better. Let Veterans see the doctor of their choice wherever it is convenient.
It’s things like that which resonate.
The RINOs and ‘RATS now are supporting Trump over Cruz, because they know they can do business as usual with a squishy populist who until recently was a liberal, but likely not with a consistent, full spectrum conservative. And the business of Washington elitists is influence peddling and growing huge government.
Time to rethink your choice, Trumpettes.
I wondered why my eyes were heavy and I was feeling sleepy. LOL! What a crock.
They are sucking up to the strong horse. Wouldn’t you, if you were Machiavellian?
I think Trump is right about Cruz, right NOW. With Cruz it is also his way or the highway, through both wisdom and folly. It would take a humbling before Cruz would support Trump; but there are many months left for this.
You’re wrong. They’re starting to support him because they know he’s going to be the nominee and they want to be seen as supporting a winner.
It’s you who are supposing the rationale.
The bible puts it more simply: “Kings feign obedience to me.” They’ll get brittle sooner or later and Trump will let them know there can only be one alpha dog in this picture.
Elites do not get it.
The idiocracy arrived eight years ago. Trump suppporter or not, he’s a billion times better than the marxist radical in there now. Trump is not the ideal conservative, but he’s pro-American, pro-business and will make decisions based on what made American thrive for generations. Not some radical view of the danger of western capitalism.
He certainly has the business sense and that is going to scare a lot of sinecures.
Trying to work too hard is a vice in the government today. I found that out the hard way. Sometimes I confess I have a hard time getting going, but a government contract I was on for a few weeks before getting so impatient I put a Post-It on the boss’s computer screen was a lesson in a whole new level of lazy for me.
If Trump, perhaps through some kind of reward scheme, turns this into a virtue, oh my the house cleaning that will take place.
How many of us have been saying, for months, that to understand what Trump is doing and why he’s so successful at it all you need to do is read a copy of “Art of the Deal”?
This is the Trump model, but the common reaction to Trump is to try to fit him into some conventional political category. Oh he’s conservative/liberal/populist/libertarian/flipflopper/you-name-it.
We might need another political party. Call it the Opportunity party.
OK. So? Trump has demonstrated ability, over decades.
He knows how to negotiate and make deals happen. This indicates that he would most likely hold his own with Congress.
He has enough personal wealth that he would not be easily purchased.
Cruz may be a more conventional conservative, but Cruz's ability to deliver is in doubt.
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