There is a palpable fear within the Republican Party that is directly attributable to the alleged popularity of their resident loudmouth blowhard and racist demagogue, Donald Trump. The fact that Trump’s offensive reality show antics has dominated the GOP primary, effectively suppressing the media presence of every other candidate, is causing the party regulars to tremble at the notion that he might actually have a shot at the nomination (he doesn’t).

While their fear of Trump prevailing in the primaries is largely unfounded, they are right to be mortified by what Trump’s success with some Republican voters means to the party and its prospects in the general election next fall. He is cementing the party’s reputation as antagonistic to minorities and political moderates, but even worse, he is appealing to an ignorance that is rampant on the right.

To illustrate the frightful attitudes of Trump’s supporters, Fox News “Word Doctor” Frank Luntz conducted a focus group to find out what drew them to the cartoon-brained billionaire. The results painted a picture of a community of dunces who have mistaken being vulgar and obnoxious for straight talk. After listening to the group, Luntz, who Trump has called a “a low class slob,” told the assembled reporters that…

“You guys understand how significant this is? This is real. I’m having trouble processing it. Like, my legs are shaking. I want to put the Republican leadership behind this mirror and let them see. They need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them. Donald Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn’t listening to their grassroots.”

What a load of bull. If Republicans have anything to fear it is the Frankenstein monster of their own making. If they need to wake up it is from the nightmare doomsday scenarios that they have been promulgating for the last seven years that portrayed President Obama as a dictator who would destroy the economy, confiscate their guns, outlaw Christianity, and declare the country the new capital of the Global Islamic Caliphate.

The grassroots of the GOP didn’t abandon the party. They were shuffled into a Tea Party subdivision that has been whining about exactly the same things that Trump’s supporters are whining about. In fact, Trump has assumed the mantle of Tea Party leadership that Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and others tried and failed to assume. He isn’t punishment for not listening, he is the manifestation of having listened and taken their idiotic yammering seriously. Some of the reasons given by the group for supporting Trump were indistinguishable from the bellyaching of the Tea Party. For instance…

• “I think America is pissed. Trump’s the first person that came out and voiced exactly what everybody’s been saying all along.”
• “When Trump talks, it may not be presented in a pristine, PC way, but we’ve been having that crap pushed to us for the past 40 years.”
• “I used to sleep on my front porch with the door wide open, and now everyone has deadbolts. I believe the best days of the country are behind us.”
• “I’m frustrated beyond belief. I feel like I’ve been lied to. Nothing’s getting better.”
  “We know his goal is to make America great again. It’s on his hat.”
• “We’ve got to show the Republicans that we’ve had it with them, that we will not be there every single time. They treat us like crap and they lie to us and promise us things and then they expect us to vote again.”
• “He’s not afraid. He keeps prodding on even if people give him negative press. He doesn’t change and apologize.”

These cretins are articulating a cacophony of contempt for America. They are inconsolable that it doesn’t resemble the fantasy they have of the white, Christian, utopia they think they were promised by God who wrote the Constitution. What’s more, they are achingly stupid. They blindly repeat the mantra that Trump is expressing what they feel, but Trump hasn’t offered any actual policies that address any real problems, so how do they know? Well, they know because it’s written on his hat. So there.

The responses from this focus group are not unique. Last month John Heilemann of Bloomberg News assembled a focus group that felt pretty much the same way. What’s interesting about this is that the character traits for which they praise Trump would be considered abhorrent if they came from Obama. If the President was described as speaking for people who were “pissed,” who thought America’s best days are behind us, didn’t care about negative press, and refused to apologize, these same Trumpbaggers would holler at the top of their lungs about what an arrogant, unpatriotic, egotistical, fascist he is.

It isn’t Trump they like. It’s the undisguised hatred and bigotry aimed at the real objects of their disgust. That begins with our African-American President and extends to all progressive sectors of society including Latinos, women, union members, teachers, scientists, and an array of diverse spiritual and secular citizens. It is not surprising that Trump’s most staunch supporters are America’s white supremacists, who regard him as the champion of disaffected whites. Although Trump espouses a platform that is identical to that of every other Republican candidate, his supporters prefer him because the others aren’t as crude or as perceivably filled with hate.

So these focus groups serve a valuable purpose in exposing Trump’s followers as the hostile and ignorant swine that they are. And to the extent that other Republican candidates, voters, and media fail to renounce it, they are just as bad. That’s what should be making Mr. Luntz’s legs shake.

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