Donald Trump is a genius. His latest attacks on Ted Cruz are resonating widely. The new PPP poll has Trump at 51 percent, up 26 points in Pennsylvania, and at an astonishing 59 percent in Connecticut, up 34 points over Kasich, with Cruz lagging behind in the low teens.
Cruz keeps snuffling up delegates, while Trump is winning at the ballot box.
Why? The genius of Trump is that he has in his attacks on Cruz put his fingers on the pulse of what the American people are feeling right now, the strongest message they want conveyed to Washington elites: “The system is rigged,” Trump proclaims, and he means the GOP delegate system that may deny him victory in the convention, even as he wins sweeping victories at the ballot box.
But if you had to sum up what the American people are feeling right now, it’s that the whole system is rigged against them.
The economy is rigged so Wall Street gets richer, but they do not. They are right. (For an analysis of why, see George Gilder’s brilliant new book, The Scandal of Money.)
The political system is rigged somehow so that voting Republican never gets GOP voters any returns.
Democrats are not nearly so angry at their leaders. President Obama passed Obamacare, even though the American majority opposed it. Core Democrats were happy with that as a down payment on national health care.
He repealed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” endorsed gay marriage, and is now using the regulatory apparatus of Washington to shut down enterprise (though global warming fears) and to impose the values implicit in gay marriage on every school child in America.
The Republicans are afraid to fight and they do not know how to deliver on the economy. If you cannot explain how the system is rigged, you cannot convincingly provide a solution.
Unless you are Donald Trump, in which case you create bogeyman like China and Mexican immigrants, and surrender to the LGBTQ lobby on girls showering with naked transgender biological males.
Cruz has lately been refocusing on the economy, as well as courageously standing up against the real political correctness pressures that Trump is dodging.
But he needs a bigger and more power answer to the question: the system is rigged. How? And how will electing Cruz change the system?
Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project and can be followed on Twitter @MaggieGallaghe.p
