David French on Trump's GOP support map

Republicans Have Overestimated the Conservatism of the Base

That New York Times map of Trump's support among self-identified GOP voters has some interesting features, and it is notable that, as French remarks, a good part of this support comes from people registered as Democrats.

His strongest support is shown in darkest color, and regions of that color include Cape Cod, Long Island, all of New York state, and most of Pennsylvania.

It is also interesting that he is strong in Hawaii.

It's not about racism unless you mean the white-hating/white-baiting variety that characterizes the left and alienates these folks, but it is about "Reagan Republicans," about whom French writes this.

If there is a consistent refrain among former Democrats (and there are lots in the South), it echoes Ronald Reagan: They didn’t leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left them. 

That means many things, but it does not mean that they’re small government, constitutional conservatives. 

It means that while they may have been attitudinally “Tea Party,” they were never on board with the core substance of the movement.

In explaining Trump's giant lead among Republican voters, French writes,

The GOP underestimated Trump in part because it overestimated the conservatism of its own southern, rural northern, and Midwestern base. 

It underestimated the extent to which many of its voters hadn’t so much embraced the corporate conservatism of the Chamber of Commerce or the constitutional conservatism of the Tea Party as much as they had rejected the extremism of the increasingly shrill and politically correct Left. 

And, yes, the size of this population calls into question the very process of building a national Republican electoral majority, but it also threatens Democrats who seem intent on drumming every blue-collar white male straight out of the party.

The details are interesting and French's piece is worth looking at, though of course he writes with the usual mendacity of the right, for example representing conservatism as fundamentally about loyalty to the US constitution and to small government and without evidence overstating Trump supporters' opposition to unions and acceptance of corporate welfare.

Essentially, he paints them as working class whites not unhappy with the progressive legacy of Big Government and the New Deal who have been alienated by the radicalism of the left that makes so much noise in the Democratic Party.

And I think he is marginally right to characterized Trump supporters as including some 20% of registered Democrats whom Trump draws away from Hillary.

He does not say Trump draws them away from Bernie, and I think that's because Bernie is and is seen to be more radical than Hill, though she is a bit more of a man-hating feminist and tries to outflank him on the left on guns.

And that means that, though some of these people would vote for Hill if Trump were to end up not the GOP nominee, they might be less likely to vote for Bernie on account of his self-advertised loathing for capitalism per se.

Maybe.

But maybe not.