Will Trump Be The Reasonable One In The Debate Bunch Tonight?

-- Etc...

All of these go against conservative orthodoxy -- and have helped propel Trump into the lead.

Trump's Republican Base Rejects Conservative Ideology

During the first Republican debate, the moderators tried to turn the Republican audience against Trump by saying he goes against conservative ideology. "Mr. Trump, it's not just your past support for single-payer health care. You've also supported a host of other liberal policies." It didn't work. Following the debate Trump's support among Republicans surged.

For decades that Republican Party has run a game in which they get votes by feeding "red meat" to "the base" and then, once in office, pass tax cuts for the rich and grant favors for giant corporations while cutting the things government does to make people's lives better. They offered weak cover stories to justify this economic assault on 99 percent of us, like "tax cuts increase government revenue," "government takes money out of the economy," "corporations making decisions is better than government making decisions," "giving money to billionaires increases jobs."

Meanwhile the things they promised the base (based on racism, nativism, theocracy) were never actually enacted because they needed to be kept around as red-meat issues for the next election. A significant portion of the Republican electorate finally got fed up with being played.

So along comes Trump, challenging this corporate-conservative orthodoxy on economic issues while still brandishing many of the red-meat policies on social issues the Republican establishment has used to get the votes. Trump is exposing that the Republican base is not as locked into the conservative dogma of trickle-down, austerity economics as the Republicans establishment leadership would have us believe.

Trump goes where the base has been trained to go, combined with obvious popular positions. And he is able to do this because he's able to self-fund his campaign.

Trump doesn't offer actual solutions. He says, "I'll just do it." He says "I'm rich." (See inside some of his mansions here.) He says of his competitors, "They're all stupid."

Trump's basic message is, "I'll make the trains run on time." This sounds great compared to the rest of them, who say, "I'll destroy the government, launch endless wars, deny basic scientific and economic facts and give everything of value to a few billionaires." Who would have thought there could be a gathering that makes Donald "if Ivanka Weren't My Daughter, Perhaps I'd Be Dating Her" Trump look good. We'll see how this holds up at Wednesday's 2nd Republican debate.

P.S. By the way, why haven't there been any Democratic debates?