Remember Howard Dean? He was the left’s “we’re angry and not going to take it anymore” candidate in 2004. He led in many polls, drew huge crowds, had all the energy of the liberal grassroots - and ended up finishing 3rd in Iowa and imploding in his speech that night with the famous “Dean Scream”. No one saw that coming. John Kerry won the nomination, the very candidate the leftist grass roots hated. Maybe with good reason since he went on to lose.
Trump has a lot of good qualities on the stump, but he is not an ideological conservative and without being grounded in true conservative thought he is prone to say some pretty sketchy things that aren’t going to appeal to conservative primary voters. A few of those things he can get away with, but they will pile up over time. Also primary voters start eyeing electability the closer we get to really casting primary ballots. I think most polls will show him losing by sizable margins to whoever the Democrat candidate is by that time, and that is going to give a lot of GOP primary voters pause.
I watched Dean, trust me at his best, before the scream, he was not relating like Trump appears to be.
I know this is politics and anything can happen, but I watched Trump’s speeches/rallies and I did so as a skeptic, and at the end of both of them, I even as a skeptic did not feel that Trump was being disingenuous in what he was saying.
Trump isn’t coming across as angry, he isn’t coming across as someone just fed up and disappointed because our political class has failed us and sold us out, though he is clearly not happy about it, he truly comes across as though he wants to fix things, not simply “I’m Angry!”
I think the comparison to Dean is inaccurate, there is something there, and its not simply Trump preaching to the converted.. He’s connecting and he’s doing it across the political spectrum. After what I have seen I am very certain that pollsters will start to see Trump garnering support from Democrats and Independents not just Republicans and not trivial support either.
I think you overestimate the desire for idealogical purity, sure there are always the small numbers who say, I want everything or I give nothing... that’s always the case, but those numbers like it or not are small. Is Trump where I am ideologically? Nope, and I bet you if you asked most of his supporters they would tell you nope he doesn’t match up ideologically as well as others who may be running.... but still they are supporting him.
You are missing a key feature when it comes to LEADERSHIP, and that’s something that has been WOEFULLY absent of candidates on both sides of the political isle for close to 30 years now... People follow leaders not because they completely agree with them, and Trump has proven himself to be a competent leader during his life, though not in the political realm, and its clearly evident that he is a natural leader, and the rest of this field has no one who you can call a natural leader... He’s not faking it til he makes it... He’s not just saying what folks want to hear, he’s not worried if he offends someone etc etc.
I hate to say it, as ideologically Cruz is closets to where I am, but from my observations to this point, Trump has the X factor, and who in this field on the right or the left is going to take him down? Not a damned one of the field on either side of the isle is going to get people to naturally gravitate toward them... The next batch of big polling I suspect is going to show major inroads by Trump into the independent and democrats.