Frank Cannon is president of the American Principles Project and a respected conservative political strategist with over 30 years of experience.
What [Trump’s victory] says is that the standard Republican economic message that’s focused on ‘job creators’ is really not the message that voters want to hear. They want a message that’s focused on them: How do people who work hard get ahead? Trump says that if we eliminate the bad trade deals and allow you to compete with workers around the world because we’re protecting you in trade deals and we’re protecting you from workers coming into the country, you can do well.
Workers want to know how they succeed. They don’t want to know how their bosses succeed. They want to know how they succeed. And Trump has been able to articulate that in a way that most Republicans have not been able to communicate. This is what we argued was wrong with the arguments from the last election cycle, from Mitt Romney, and this is, I think, what voters are looking for in this election.
