HOW MIGHT Republicans stop Donald Trump? A gathering of 29 Trump supporters this week in northern Virginia mostly offered lessons in how not to do it. The three-hour session on the night of December 9th was organised by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican media consultant, for the benefit of CBS television and a dozen or so invited reporters, among them your columnist.
The Trump supporters—all of whom voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election, and who ranged fairly widely in income and education—were asked to rate a series of TV attack ads, pounding their hero as a liar, a hypocrite, a flip-flopper and a bully. The attacks were almost comically ineffective, as the group twisted itself into knots to avoid criticising the Republican front-runner.
One campaign spot showed old footage of Mr Trump voicing any number of conservative heresies: from defending legal abortion to praising Hillary Clinton. Another caused a few ripples of unease: a doomy, downbeat series of interviews with blue-collar folk and small contractors who had suffered when doing business with Mr Trump’s property empire, and blamed him for the loss of...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1M7Mte6
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