Janell Ross on Trump’s recent polling and his position within the GOP:
Did the GOP wait too long to disown Donald Trump?
This time, officialdom and the political press alike seem more certain than ever (which is not necessarily saying much) that Trump has crossed the line. ...
But the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released late Thursday dug inside public opinion on Trump's suggestion that the country halt any and all Muslim immigration. A full 42 percent of Republicans backed Trump's proposal, while 36 percent opposed it. Among Republican primary voters — those most likely to show up and decide all those contests between now and the Republican convention — things are even closer. Researchers found that 38 percent supported Trump's idea, and 39 percent opposed it.
Translation: There's either a very narrow remaining chance of preventing this idea from cementing Trump's base and further dividing the GOP, or this is a very recently lost cause.
Larry Sabato:
The Trump effect is now probably long-term, meaning that even if he falls by the wayside in the nomination contest, he will continue to be a factor. Maybe he will run as an independent. Maybe he will make life difficult for the eventual GOP nominee from his permanent headquarters on Twitter. Or maybe it’s simply the accumulation of his offensive statements on videotape that will be used by Democrats to taint the fall Republican ticket.
An aside: How in the world will the Republican Party ever reunify behind its nominee in time and with sufficient enthusiasm to win next November? Right now, it appears that the party must depend on its members’ deep-seated, intense antipathy toward Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to do the trick — neither of whom, it should be emphasized, are all that popular with the general electorate at the moment. In addition, the international situation, coupled with domestic terrorism, may be the extra fuel needed for the GOP to prevail. Finally, in a partisan age, we should expect Republican voters to rally around the party in the general election, although a divisive nominee will test this expectation. All of this will be revisited another day, when the smoke of the nomination fight finally starts to clear.
Trump’s main opponents in the future may be two Rising Sons of the Sun Belt, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, 44-year-old Cuban Americans who are serving freshman terms in the Senate.
Paul Krugman:
We live in an era of political news that is, all too often, shocking but not surprising. The rise of Donald Trump definitely falls into that category. And so does the electoral earthquake that struck France in Sunday’sregional elections, with the right-wing National Front winning more votes than either of the major mainstream parties.
What do these events have in common? Both involved political figures tapping into the resentments of a bloc of xenophobic and/or racist voters who have been there all along. The good news is that such voters are a minority; the bad news is that it’s a pretty big minority, on both sides of the Atlantic. If you are wondering where the support for Mr. Trump or Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Front, is coming from, you just haven’t been paying attention.
Philip Klein:
For decades, liberals have created a caricature of Republicans as being more about bombast and white resentment than substance and principles. Should Donald Trump win the GOP presidential nomination, it would help validate this cartoonish portrait.
That's why those who work to elect Republicans and advance conservative policy ideas are recoiling from his dominance in polling. It's why liberals are greeting his rise with "I told you sos" and why their allies in the media are perfectly content to promote Trump and allow him to define the GOP electorate.
Matthew Continetti:
The speed with which prominent Republican officials and conservative spokesmen condemned Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States revealed the true stakes in the 2016 election. The future of the GOP as we know it is in question—not the party’s political future but its ideological one. Donald Trump’s candidacy is already intensifying party divisions. Nominating him would alter the character of the Republican Party in a fundamental way.
GOP voters understand this possibility. A majority backs candidates other than Trump. But the huge Republican field splits the anti-Trump vote and gives him double-digit leads in national and state polls. And while it is possible those polls overstate Trump’s support, it’s equally possible that they understate it.
Paul Farhi (blurb from WaPo internet front page):
The GOP candidate [Trump, of course] may be the first politician to exploit the widespread distrust of conventional news sources as well as the alternative reality provided by the right-wing, libertarian and flat-out paranoid sources proliferating on the Internet today.
From BBC, a few analysts think Trump can get the nom, but no one thinks he can win the WH:
Kyle Kondik, an analyst of political campaigns at the University of Virginia
Unlikely to win nomination, no to presidency
Some have pointed to Donald Trump's endurance at the top of the Republican primary polls as an indication that his various absurd and offensive comments have not done him damage. But I think they have done him real harm.
Trump's racist proposals and rhetoric have solidified the GOP leadership against him and made it easier for other Republicans to argue that the man would be a disaster as the general election nominee against Hillary Clinton, an opponent who Republicans do not want to be president.
The primary process is a long slog that starts in February and ends with the convention in July, and unlike in previous contests where losing candidates have dropped out earlier than they needed to in deference to the clear winner, the other competitors will have little reason to cede the nomination to Mr Trump. If he thought standing on a debate stage for three hours was hard, wait until he has to endure that slog.
Trump is very unpopular nationally - one recent poll pegged his favourability/unfavourability split at 30% favourable/60% unfavourable - and it's hard to see how he would improve those numbers if nominated.
One of the persistent questions of this election is whether Mrs Clinton can motivate lower-turnout, non-white voters to show up to the polls. The presence of Mr Trump at the top of the ticket would be, for Clinton and the Democrats, the best motivator of all.
Norman Ornstein, scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Yes to nomination, unlikely he will win the presidency
Despite the long-time pundit consensus that Donald Trump had no chance, he is likely in it for a long time and definitely has a chance to win the nomination.
To be sure, we need to be a bit cautious here. It is very early, and some survey results suggest that Trump's supporters have not voted before in primaries or caucuses.
But his support is not simply capped at 25%, and even if it were, he can still win several early contests and build more momentum. He has not had to spend any real money, but has allocated significant resources to building some structure in the early states.