Chaos is Donald Trump’s best friend in his 2016 presidential bid. The more of it, the better…

At its most basic, Trump’s 2016 message is this: Everything is broken.  None of the people in charge know how to fix it.  And no one will tell you that truth except for me.

What better way to illustrate that argument than to have chaos reign? The more chaos, the easier it is for Trump to make the case that a radical change is not only a possibility but a necessity. So, market drops work in Trump’s favor. Terrorist videos help him. Unrest in Iraq and Syria help him. Concerns about undocumented workers committing crimes in the U.S. help him.

In short: Anything that makes people feel anxious or afraid — two of the most powerful motivations and motivators in politics — helps Trump. His appeal to people is his unwavering belief in himself and his abilities. Other people fail, he succeeds. I know how to do all of this, it’s not that hard, Trump tells voters about, well, everything. Trust me.  I will make everything better.

Republicans are increasingly worried that Donald Trump’s candidacy will hurt the party’s quest to maintain the Senate majority in 2016…

“I think it’s pretty clear that some of [Trump’s] more dramatic proposals on immigration will certainly affect races like the Nevada senate race in particular,” said one Nevada GOP strategist…

Florida GOP strategist Rick Wilson, who is advising Florida Senatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, thinks that “in the big picture, all of these candidates will stand or fall on their own strengths.” 

But, he added, “the worst case scenario is that Trump is running a campaign that is only about Trump, and [GOP Senate candidates] are constantly under the gun and trying to answer the latest policy announcement he makes.” 

First, white working-class voters have proven increasingly unpredictable and unfaithful to any single party. It should not be surprising that they tend to live in many of the most prominent swing states, including Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

This may look fickle, but it is not indecisiveness. Rather the sense that neither party has done much for them over the past 40 years. The Rust Belt population has confronted post-industrial economic collapse and depopulation. It is fed up with Washington, and cynical about politicians who pledge to address its plight…

Trump’s bombastic declarations that his rivals have been corrupted by corporations and donors (like himself) validates the belief among white working-class voters that the political system is rigged by the very special interests that abruptly closed American factories, laid off American workers and invested money overseas to circumvent American wages and taxes…

The strength of Trump’s connection with this constituency of frustrated, silenced people is not likely to recede, given the inability of his Republican opponents to access the financial and political independence Trump wields.

“Nothing disqualifies Trump.”

That was the takeaway of Frank Luntz, the public opinion guru, after leading a focus group Monday night of supporters of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign…

Luntz gave the participants 21 examples of things that could be problematic for Trump today. That includes how Trump was once pro-choice, supported single-payer healthcare, gave more money to the Democrats, supported stricter gun laws, supported the legalization of marijuana and has been married multiple times.

Yet, most people in the focus group said it was difficult for them to even care about most of them.

“The man’s entitled to change his mind on things,” said one woman.

“We know his goal is to make America great again,” a woman said. “It’s on his hat. And we see it every time it’s on TV. Everything that he’s doing, there’s no doubt why he’s doing it: it’s to make America great again.”…

“You guys understand how significant this is?” Luntz asked the press breathlessly when he came back into the room behind the glass. “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,” Luntz continued. “Donald Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn’t listening to their grassroots.”…

The group of 29 went around the room, each supplying a single adjective for the legislative body that let them down after the 2014 elections. Congress “does nothing.” It’s “too old.” “Useless.” “Lame.” “Inept.” “Wrong party.” “Cocktail party.” “Gridlock.” “Costly.” “Sold out.” “Sucks.” “Douchebags.”

Then, the group did the same for Trump. This time: “Tough.” “Businessman.” “Great.” “Successful.” “Not afraid.” “Leader.” “Has guts.” “Charismatic.” “A true American.” “Kicks ass and takes names.”

The panelists ranked Trump’s promise to repeal Obamacare and “restore the balance between U.S. trading partners” highest among his various stands on the issues. Some respondents, including a woman from Mexico, pointed to Trump’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as the moment they decided to support him.

But Trump’s biggest selling point isn’t what he’s done—it’s what he hasn’t. A majority of respondents are simply happy that he’s not a politician, based on their negative views of members of Congress…

Many voiced their dissatisfaction with Congress, particularly its Republican members. When voters were asked to describe Congress in one word during the session on Monday, the most commonly used word was “useless.”…

Trump has threatened not to support a Republican candidate if he isn’t the nominee, holding open the option of running as an independent. For some voters in the session, that wasn’t a problem. Only six of the 29 admitted they were bothered by it, but the rest were not. In fact, for many, Trump’s lack of partisan loyalty only enhanced his appeal. “He’s not a politician. I won’t vote for an established politician,” one man said.

Words, you see, are for losers. For the overrated. For the establishment. Real candidates leer and emote and strut back and forth. At times resembling a man who hoped to discover whether methamphetamine or LSD served as the best accompaniment to a mostly whisky diet, Trump stood throughout his pageant [in Alabama] in a cocksure fighting pose, breaking his stance only to turn around and bathe in the adulation. When he spoke, he did so as might a half-awake stranger at an underground poetry slam. His thoughts were meandering, irrational, and wholly self-contradictory; his grasp of reality left much to be desired; his aim was to offer up a firework-laden piece of self-serving performance art, aimed squarely at the unserious and the easily led. “I know how Billy Graham felt,” Trump preached before he launched into his quasi-hallucinogenic diatribe. Superficially, perhaps he does. But Graham, recall, was preaching about an external God…

Throughout, Trump made considerable hay of his not being a politician, to the point of boorish demagoguery. Given the scale of the dissatisfaction with Washington, D.C., one can understand why. One cannot, however, comprehend why his audience should not know better than to accept the ruse. In a cynical attempt to tap into latent unrest, Trump has set himself up not merely as another option, but as a veritable messiah who will bring salvation by sheer force of will, and who does therefore not have time to waste discussing details. As Alabama confirmed, it is not merely the case that Donald Trump is no politician; he’s not engaged in politics at all. In style, Trump’s shtick is akin to Barack Obama’s, pre-2009 — but, in the place of faux-moderation and ersatz Greek columns, he is offering mass public resentment and a kickass laser show.

All of which is to say that Donald Trump has matured in precisely the wrong direction, having moved from bumbling dilettante to Dunning-Kruger poster-boy in a single leap. Politics in a free republic consists of modesty, of compromise, and of dull perseverance. It is, by its very nature, the precise opposite of rock and roll. Self-described “conservatives” have historically prided themselves on their aversion to our gaudy celebrity culture and their disgust at the conflation of reality TV and the quotidian workings of the government. They should not abandon this virtuous instinct just because a rich and famous entertainer has donned an oversized hat and pandered to their prejudices for a summer. Not all stars that fall on Alabama should be given access to the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Let us leave Donald Trump to his trip.

What could he possibly be thinking?

Answer: He’s not thinking, he’s emoting, Megyn Kelly made him feel bad with her pointed questions and Insolent Journalism and now he’s going to obsess about that hurt forever and ever, as he did with Rosie O’Donnell…

It does not presage well for a Trump presidency — he’ll have plenty of people talking smack about him as president, and, as president, do I trust that he will limit his zest for payback to Twitter?

Or do I start to fear he’ll be a Lois Lerner type?

This worries me. He does not seem capable of just shaking it off and moving on. He seems to be frozen forever at his point of psychological pain.

Is this guy a seven-year-old? http://t.co/ZBVMqtLova

— Brit Hume (@brithume) August 25, 2015

This is a fascinating gut-check moment for right-of-center populism, for conservative media, and for Fox itself. Right-wing media rose up as an angry, entertaining response to liberal media bias, but that was a good two decades ago. Rhetorically bomb-throwing media populists are not likely to change what made them successful—which helps explain why many of Trump’s biggest media defenders are the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Ann Coulters of the world—but the fact is those people have long since converted their regular-guy personae into multi-million-dollar careers. Fox News has absolutely dominated cable news since its inception.

At the same time, success and maturity sometimes threaten to breed, well, maturation. And no Fox broadcaster embodies that notion better than Roger Ailes’ hand-picked, next-generation face of the network: Megyn Kelly. A self-described “independent,” Kelly—a former lawyer whose hard-hitting interview style has drawn lengthy critical praise from the likes of New York Times Magazine—is nobody’s idea of a conservative populist. She’s a member of the media elite, even more than Fox is.

Trump is clearly calculating here that his anti-establishment, anti-media, anti-decorum fanbase is angry enough at conservative elitism and sell-outtery that they’ll side with his brave attack against the 800-pound gorilla of anti-liberal media. And I suspect he may well be right. The taglines write themselves: Too conservative for Fox! Too anti-PC for the shrinking violets scared of Megyn Kelly’s ratings! The only candidate willing to tell Roger Ailes to go f*ck himself!

It will certainly be more interesting than usual to watch former Ailes darlings Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity tonight. And also to see whether the people who have profited so handsomely from cable news carnival-barking will ever become reflective about the story of Dr. Frankenstein.

Via the IJ Review.