Republicans Are Self-Destructing By Convincing Themselves That Trump Could Beat Clinton

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:10 pm

According to a new CNN poll, Donald Trump is now competitive with Hillary Clinton in a general election contest because white male Republicans are convincing themselves that Trump could win.

CNN reported, “The poll finds Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump by just 6 points, a dramatic tightening since July. Trump is the one of three Republican candidates who have been matched against Clinton multiple times in CNN/ORC polling to significantly whittle the gap between himself and the Democratic frontrunner. He trailed Clinton by 16 points in a July poll, and narrowed that gap by boosting his standing among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (from 67% support in July to 79% now), men (from 46% in July to 53% now) and white voters (from 50% to 55%).”

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Trump isn’t picking up support from the broader electorate. His rise in general election performance is directly connected to growth in support for him by the Republican base. The numbers indicate that Republican voters are engaging in behavior that has become common over the last three presidential election cycles.

Republicans have become prone to picking the candidate that they think can win in November, nominating that candidate, and brainwashing themselves into believing that a candidate that doesn’t appeal to the rest of the electorate WILL win.

In 2012, Republicans convinced themselves that all of the polls were “skewed.” They threw out all signs of reality and delusionally believed that Mitt Romney was certain to win against Obama. When Obama cleaned Romney’s clock on election night, Karl Rove melted down on Fox News, the Koch brothers wasted a ton of money, and Barack Obama was a two-term president.

Republicans are repeating the same behavior as the nation moves into 2016. Mitt Romney has been replaced by the unelectable Donald Trump, but the other factors are largely the same. Donald Trump, like Mitt Romney, is promising victory on an extremist ideological agenda, and Republican voters are buying it.

The cause of this self-destructiveness among the GOP can be traced back to the party’s search for another Ronald Reagan. Republicans love Trump, who like Reagan, is an actor who knows how to use over the top rhetoric to get maximum attention. Unlike Reagan, Trump can’t win.

The reality is that Hillary Clinton leads all of the Republican candidates in the new CNN/ORC poll. Trump’s anti-immigrant statements are only making the Democratic coalition stronger.

This poll is good news for Democrats because it is evidence that Republicans are in the process of convincing themselves to make another horrible choice that will doom them to defeat in 2016.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association