This time, it’s the populists’ turn to make the mistake of predicting Donald Trump’s political demise. After humiliating Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russian investigation, Trump is testing the limits of how much chaos Republicans are willing to take. …
The political world is going to find out, all over again, that most Republican voters will side with the president—even over Sessions, who provided political credibility to Trump at a critical time during the presidential primaries. …
One of the most significant findings about Trump supporters came from an in-depth survey of the president’s voters commissioned by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics in April. The survey found that nearly half of Trump voters backed him because of his “willingness to tell it like it is instead of being politically correct”—four times as many people who said they backed him because of his positions on issues. It’s why Trump was able to build a broad GOP coalition, from moderates in the Northeast to tea-party activists in the South. It’s why the Republican Party is slowly morphing into a cult-of-personality vehicle around Trump. CONT.
Josh Kraushaar, National Journal