If what you say is true, that many conservatives are so easily misled by Trump’s message, doesn’t that really reflect how sh&tty the rest of the field must be? According to you Trump can just March in with a totally contrived message and completely suck the air out of the room leaving real so called candidates in his dust. If that really IS the case, then it simply means that none of the other candidates reflect the feelings of the base anyway....making them completely unelectable.
The Republican Party has crapped all over its base for the past 25+ years and a huge number within that base have come to the conclusion that there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between a (D) or an (R). Professional politicians have destroyed this country and the anger they have created has opened the door for any non-politician candidate that is willing to express that frustration. The fact that Trump is arrogant, brash, untrustworthy, etc is irrelevant as the only thing that matters to them is that he seems to feel our frustration with party leadership and direction of the country and he’s willing to incur a whole lot of abuse just to express it.
In the first part of this quoted statement is where you sort of make my point. Where is the conservative intellect being applied to Trump as a candidate? He was against conservative principles before he was for them...if he is really for them?
He is saying what you want to hear. The base has been saying this same stuff for a long time. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to falsely adopt the rhetoric.