Ryan Streeter
I probably won't vote for him if he runs, but I think Jay Cost, with Michael Barone's help, make good cases today for why we need to take Trump seriously.
Cost writes:
Here is a high profile public figure with a hit television show. He doesn’t have a reputation for being a partisan political operative, and he comes on the Today Show (of all places!) to denounce the president in clear and unequivocal terms. That is something we have not seen yet during Obama’s term. So far, most of the attacks have been from the usual partisan quarters, and they do not get presented in such an unfiltered fashion to the sorts of people who watch the Today Show. Nor, for that matter, are they presented with the kind of directness that "The Donald" is famous for.
He quotes Barone's Almanac and compares the Trump factor to the Perot factor, namely that Perot "departisanized" the attacks on George H.W. Bush, which drove Bush's numbers lower than if the critiques had been left to Clinton himself.
Cost points out that Obama's numbers on specific issues - economy, health care - are very weak, and concludes that Trump's direct attack on Obama on the Today show, which reaches many more Americans than typical cable news or talk radio, provides the template for Romney, Pawlenty, and the others. This will have the overall effect of dinging Obama significantly.
On the "birther issue," Cost dismisses it as damaging to Trump's otherwise effective attack on Obama. I'm not so sure. Now, personally don't care about this issue and wish it would go away. I'm firmly in the camp of those who take the President and the State of Hawaii at their word. But Trump has ventured with boldness into territory no one else would go and will likely succeed, at some level, in persuading some percentage of independents that they should regard Obama suspiciously. When Huckabee sorta, kinda flirted with the birther issue, it only made Obama look stronger and Huck weaker. The opposite will likely happen with Trump. His attack isn't partisan or predictable or half-hearted. In the interview this morning, he said that he basically believed Obama the first time Trump raise the issue, but that he's grown more suspicious given the response - or lack thereof - that he's received since then. What he's doing may be wrong or silly, but it will influence voters in a way that others with less celebrity, less exposure, less forcefulness will never do.
In the end Trump's rise seems related to an overall lack of enthusiasm among voters for the 2012 field.
But whatever the case, Cost is right: no one of such prominence has attacked the President so directly as a failure and tied the direction of the country, which concerns voters across the board, to Obama personally. That will make a difference if Trump keeps it up.
Personally, on the eligibility issue, I never take politicians nor government entities at their word. History has shown that it is wise to do just the opposite. Obama is hiding something. And the issue has helped Trump, despite what the media and political class say.
Trump is the anti-Obama, and his time may have come. If not him, it is certainly time for someone like him--an outsider, plain spoken, transparent, uncowed, proud of his country, can't be bought, and horrified at the current direction in which our nation is headed.
Posted by: drj1400 | April 14, 2011 at 11:45 AM