PrintTrickle Down Vitriol against Trump Supporters
It looks like there has been a coordinated effort to demean Trump supporters, but the only evidence we have is in disparaging epithets published over the past several months. We may never know who sent out the ‘trash Trump supporters’ talking point, but we do know various media outlets on the right, and their pundits, have been on the same page that, if you vote for Trump, you’re a loser.
The loudest anti-Trump/supporter voices are conservatives within the elite media complex including National Review, Townhall.com, RedState, and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. Think tanks like American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute, both funded by the Kochs have also weighed in.
Just yesterday National Review, fresh off facing enormous backlash over their Gang of 22 "Against Trump" article from last week, decided to go after Trump voters. Expanding on the "low-info" label, NR's Kevin Williamson stated, "But his enthusiasts, devoid as they are of a literate politics capable of thinking about all three sides of a triangle at the same time, take a kind of homeopathic view of Trump."
It’s one thing for conservatives to go against liberals and call their followers ‘zombies’ and ‘Kool-Aid drinkers,' but high profile media groups on the right are calling hundreds of thousands of Americans attending Trump rallies "embarrassing," "low-information," and "cult-followers." How is eating your own going to win an election?
Here are some examples of the vitriol against Trump supporters:
Headline Cato Institute: “Does Donald Trump Really Do Best Among Less Educated Voters?”
“The real problem are his supporters...I am angry at these people. They know better than this. They are better than this. And it pains me that these reckless, bored people are coming, presumably, from the conservative ranks.” American Thinker
“And Donald Trump’s voters are what they call low-information voters”—David Brooks, PBS
Arthur Brooks, American Enterprise Institute…accused the Trump supporters of being “low information voters.”
Headline Before Its News: “Is Donald Trump a Cult Leader for Racially Resentful, Low Information, Right-wing, White Voters?”
Headline The Blaze: “To Trump Disciples: You’re Embarrassing Conservatism and Yourselves”
Last May, a month before Donald Trump announced his candidacy, Breitbart's editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro bemoaned the Republican establishment's "big tent party collapse":
Just look at the Republican field today: an agglomeration of random humans appealing to small segments of the population. The Republican Party has now fragmented into Tea Party Republicans who oppose Establishment Republicans, Socially Conservative Republicans who oppose Libertarian Republicans. None of these candidates are running for the nomination; all of them are running for approximately 25 percent of the vote in a primary. Winning one quarter of primary voters in the early states could win the nomination.
Seven months later, the Republicans have a candidate who cuts across all lines, bringing in evangelicals, Latinos, Catholics, blue collar workers, Democrats, Independents, moderate Republicans, blacks, millennials and middle-class voters. Shapiro and his colleagues should be thrilled--but not so much.
For the self-appointed arbiters of conservatism, Trump just doesn't have the right stuff and his followers don’t either.
Read more Evans and Kane at ExZoom.net
