Giving Trump His Due

Every Trump critic had "Oh, hell" moments during the primary season.

They were when Donald Trump demonstrated a keen gut-level political instinct that even an exceptionally talented conventional politician would be hard-pressed to match.

An example: During a Republican debate in Florida in February, Trump was asked about former Mexican President Vicente Fox's comment that his country wouldn't pay for Trump's "f---ing wall."

"The wall just got 10 feet taller," Trump shot back. He then called on Fox to apologize for his foul language, reiterated that our Southern neighbors would, indeed, pay for the wall and hit Mexico for its myriad sins against the United States.

The 10-foot-higher comment was funny and memorable. A Republican senator told me that his cellphone instantly lit up with constituents thrilled at what Trump had said. In slapping down el presidente, Trump advertised his toughness and nationalistic bona fides in a way a $10 million ad buy never could.

Oh. Hell.

Then, there was the time he turned Ted Cruz’s "New York values" attack into a riff about 9/11, leaving the college debate champion no option but to applaud Trump’s rejoinder. Or when he made the disruption of a Chicago rally by protesters into an advertisement for his stalwartness against thuggery. Or his temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

You could have locked a 100 political consultants in a room and told them not to leave until they had a perfect response to the San Bernardino terror attack, and they never would have emerged proposing to ban all Muslim travel to the U.S. When Trump said it, the world collapsed around his head. Everyone denounced him.

No one agreed with Trump — except Republican voters. According to exit polls, it was his strongest issue. In New Hampshire, 65 percent supported the ban, in South Carolina, 74 percent supported it, in New York, 68 percent. Trump won a solid plurality of those voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and an astonishing 72 percent of them in New York.

The idea of a ban on Muslims is completely unreasonable and, if you were to going to try to implement it, impractical (ticket agents in Europe would have to try to discern the religion of passengers flying to the U.S.). Trump's insight was that it didn’t matter. The emotional punch of the ban, and the way it differentiated him from the other candidates, was the important thing. In this case, as in so many others, having a serious, responsible policy staff or practiced political consultants would only have hampered his cause.

Trump's achievement is difficult to fathom. With no pollsters, no speechwriters, no fundraising staff, little campaign organization, few TV advertisements, no debate prep and a paper-thin knowledge of public affairs, he has won a major-party presidential nomination. This is a 100-year event.

Trump did it by pounding a simple, emotive message over and over again in big rallies and media appearances. His shibboleths are burned into the consciousness of his supporters in a way we haven’t seen the circa 2008 "hope and change" Barack Obama. The Trump supporter with whom Cruz argued a few days before the Indiana primary wasn’t highly informed, but he sure as hell knew to shout, "Lyin' Ted!"

The standard operating procedure of political candidates is not to offend and not to court unnecessary controversy. Trump, a creature of the tabloids, has an ingrained instinct to do the opposite. It made him stand out from an initial field of 17 and almost every act of outrageousness reinforced his image as the "truth-telling" outsider.

If Trump proved an exceptionally skilled politician in his inimitable way, he was also fortunate. For the longest time, there wasn’t any organized effort against him. He won three out of the first four contests while his rivals squabbled among themselves. The establishment initially bet on Jeb Bush, and then, tapped out financially and psychologically, did nothing to rally around Cruz, whom many insiders fear and hate more than Trump.

It seemed that Cruz’s Wisconsin victory was a watershed. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end. He literally didn’t have one good day after April 5. There were many reasons for that, including the race’s shift to the Northeast. But once it became clear that the only alternative to a clean Trump nomination was a contested convention — with the agony of the primary prolonged two more months and perhaps punctuated by riots in Cleveland — Republican voters seemed to want to shut down the process as soon as possible.

It’s a cliché to say that Trump has changed all the rules. That isn’t strictly true because what he has done isn’t easily replicable. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else dominating the media like Trump (even Vladimir Putin, who directly controls the Russian media, must be envious) or being so adept at waving off his own contradictory statements or bull-dozing through his own ignorance.

Now it’s on to the next test. The teams built by Oakland A’s general manager and "Moneyball" impresario Billy Beane always sputter out in October. "My s--- doesn't work in the playoffs," he has explained. The question now is whether Trump’s will work in the general. At the same time he has lit up 40 percent of the Republican Party, Trump has alienated large swaths of the general public and key voting groups, who are (understandably) not as charmed by his bombast and free-swinging insults.

It would be foolish to discount his chances. But it may be that he’s just good enough at this to get into the general, where he will take down a lot of good conservatives with him. Oh, hell.

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