Donald Trump leads the Republican presidential field in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, not only in vote preferences but in expectations as well -– a remarkable feat for the non-politician who’s surprised the GOP establishment with his staying power as well as his support…

Trump also fares well on many key attributes. Nearly half of leaned Republicans — 47 percent — view him as the strongest leader; 39 percent think he’d be best able to handle immigration; 32 percent feel he is closest to them on the issues; and 29 percent say he “best understands the problems of people like you.” In each case he leads the other top-five contenders for the nomination, Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina.

Donald Trump is still on top. He’s been No. 1 in the polls for the GOP presidential nomination for three months now and his support appears stable. A new ABC/Washington Post survey shows him as the choice of 32 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning voters – about the same as a month ago.

“The numbers suggest that mixed reviews of his performance in the second Republican debate in California did little to dampen the enthusiasm of his supporters,” write Washington Post political reporters Dan Balz and Scott Clement.

Is Trump’s persistence causing the GOP establishment to panic? Well, “panic” might not be the best word, but there’s evidence the powers-that-be are beginning to worry quite a bit about what Trump is doing to their plans. It’s dawned on them that that the chances of Trump winning the nomination might not be zero, and the chances of him affecting the nomination outcome are pretty high. For them, the question has become how to attack Trump, not whether to do it.

One of the more unusual aspects of Donald Trump’s three-plus months at the top of the Republican presidential field is that to so many, myself included, it still seems like it’s only temporary. A number of people who spend a lot of time looking at the numbers have, since he took the lead in July, written about the various reasons why his lead would be temporary — again, myself included. People who rely on poll data were saying, in some sense, “I’m going with the numbers in my gut.”

But the real numbers, including those in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, support the idea that Trump will continue to lead and that he could win the nomination.

There’s the top-line number, of course, which shows Trump with a lead over the rest of the field. Nearly a third of Republican voters pick Trump as their candidate, followed by 22 percent who choose Ben Carson. As we noted last week, those two share a base of support, meaning that if one were to drop out, the other could and probably would pick up much of his support. In other words: Trump has some room to grow.

What’s more, his lead has actually been much more stable this year than Mitt Romney’s was in the latter half of 2011.

To be sure, Trump’s campaign isn’t totally standard: Few of his hires have presidential campaign experience; his Iowa chairwoman is a former contestant on his reality show, The Apprentice. He doesn’t have a pollster or a super PAC. Though his press secretary, Hope Hicks, occasionally tangles with the media, he frequently gets on the phone with reporters to speak for himself in articles about him, rather than deploying a spokesperson. (This is refreshing, and more candidates should do it.)

But Trump is a candidate—and an uncommonly successful one—and it’s silly to keep pretending that his campaign is a mere brand exercise or entertainment. He has hired a lot of staff and opened offices across the country. He has issued position papers (three so far: immigration, guns, and taxes). He’s organizing potential caucus- and primary-goers in the early-voting states and beyond. No other candidate, engaging in these activities, would be greeted with shock for doing the things presidential candidates are widely expected to do, particularly after he had been doing it, and proclaiming he was doing it to anyone who would listen, for months.

Indeed, by succeeding so easily at the campaign game, Trump has made a mockery of political journalism’s obsession with campaign strategy. Reporters, myself included, treat campaigns as a delicate and mysterious art, one whose practice reveals the inner core of the candidates themselves. Trump just found a bunch of people he liked and hired them, and it’s working out great. And isn’t that what he’s saying he would do if he gets elected?

There’s a bet­ter way to di­vide the GOP can­did­ates in­to two groups: Don­ald Trump and every­one else. Trump’s sup­port is pre­dom­in­antly from voters who aren’t Re­pub­lic­an rank-and-file voters. His sup­port­ers have an ideo­lo­gic­ally dis­tinct pro­file, ac­cord­ing to Pew’s ana­lys­is: more mod­er­ate, more sec­u­lar, more blue-col­lar. They’re also less re­li­able caucus and primary voters. These voters are not new to the Re­pub­lic­an Party. They used to be called Re­agan Demo­crats; they voted for Pat Buchanan in the 1992 and 1996 Re­pub­lic­an primar­ies, and they com­prised much of Mitt Rom­ney’s op­pos­i­tion in the 2012 nom­in­a­tion battle. They’re grow­ing as a share of the GOP elect­or­ate: Bob Dole and George W. Bush won about 60 per­cent of the over­all GOP primary vote; Rom­ney only won 52 per­cent in 2012.

There’s good reas­on why Trump has run on a non­tra­di­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an plat­form, one that’s skep­tic­al of mil­it­ary in­ter­ven­tion, hos­tile to il­leg­al im­mig­ra­tion, and op­posed to free trade deals. Last week, he even at­tacked former Pres­id­ent George W. Bush for not an­ti­cip­at­ing the 9/11 at­tacks. Trump has been ad­voc­at­ing hik­ing taxes on wealthy cor­por­a­tions and in­di­vidu­als. His past sup­port of abor­tion rights, and ad­mis­sion that he hasn’t sought for­give­ness from God, don’t en­dear him to evan­gel­ic­als. But these po­s­i­tions match the ideo­lo­gic­al pro­file of his sup­port­ers. Trump is no dummy; he’s run­ning a cam­paign geared to­wards voters that many Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates, with their em­phases on tax cuts, free trade, and im­mig­ra­tion re­form, have per­en­ni­ally ig­nored.

Both na­tion­al and state polls show Trump open­ing a sub­stan­tial lead among Re­pub­lic­an voters without a col­lege edu­ca­tion al­most every­where. And in al­most all cases, Trump is win­ning more sup­port from non­col­lege Re­pub­lic­ans than any can­did­ate is at­tract­ing from Re­pub­lic­an voters with at least a four-year edu­ca­tion. “It’s a chal­lenge to Re­pub­lic­ans that nobody has con­sol­id­ated the col­lege-gradu­ate vote against Trump,” says Glen Bol­ger, a long­time GOP poll­ster skep­tic­al of the front-run­ner.

In oth­er words, Trump is ce­ment­ing a strong blue-col­lar base, while the white-col­lar voters re­l­at­ively more res­ist­ant to him have yet to uni­fy around any single al­tern­at­ive. That dis­par­ity is crit­ic­al be­cause in both the 2008 and 2012 GOP nom­in­a­tion fights, voters with and without a four-year col­lege de­gree each cast al­most ex­actly half of the total primary votes, ac­cord­ing to cu­mu­lat­ive ana­lyses of exit poll res­ults by ABC poll­ster Gary Langer. With the two wings evenly matched in size, Trump’s great­er suc­cess at con­sol­id­at­ing his “brack­et” ex­plains much of his ad­vant­age in the polls…

Look­ing at all these num­bers, Bol­ger pre­dicts that if Trump is de­throned from his front-run­ner status, it’s more likely to come from a more cent­rist al­tern­at­ive uni­fy­ing up­scale voters than an­oth­er con­ser­vat­ive peel­ing away his blue-col­lar sup­port. “Trump has shown re­mark­able stay­ing power and the res­on­ance of his pop­u­list mes­sage sug­gests he’s not go­ing away any time soon,” Bol­ger said. “The guy has shown he has a bet­ter polit­ic­al touch than most people ex­pec­ted, prob­ably be­cause most of the pun­dits think with the mind of col­lege gradu­ates, rather than what the less well-edu­cated voters will re­act to.”

This year, he resonates — as do his relevant, if simplistically stated, views on trade, terrorism, the challenge of radical Islam and so much more.

This should surprise no one.

Disquiet rooted in a persistently weak economy, a chaotic foreign policy, growing national-security concerns and domestic social turmoil is aggravated by the sense that dissent — or even questioning conventional wisdom as defined by America’s condescending elites — is not only improper, but also immoral.

Resentment?

You betcha.

And that’s a pony Trump seems determined to ride as far as it will carry him. Which has been pretty far.

And guess what? He’s served the nation well — if only by dragging these issues to center stage, thereby forcing a discussion of them.

“At some point, the things he says go from being ‘crazy old Donald Trump’ to defining — this is how Republicans think and feel. And that’s dangerous,” said Katie Packer, who served as 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s deputy campaign manager.

Packer says there is “some rumbling” about a well-funded anti-Trump campaign and offered a wake-up call to Republicans who assume Trump’s candidacy will ultimately collapse. “Folks have to remember that lead changes don’t just happen,” she said. “Something causes them to happen.”…

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, whom Trump has criticized personally, asked a group of roughly 100 donors to raise their hands to indicate support for various candidates. Just one person did so for Trump, which prompted moans across the room, according to two people inside who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private gathering…

“They were very engaged in the idea that somebody has to do something, or Donald Trump will destroy the party,” said one of the people who attended the meeting of the donors and was in the room.

You know what’s amazing to me?  When is the last time — seriously now, folks.  I’m just throwing an observation of mine out there to you.  When is the last time you remember a political party working so hard to bring down its own front-runner?  Now, there have been times where parties have tried to take out other candidates — (interruption) Well, when?  When’s the last time?  (interruption).  Was Reagan ever the front-runner in ’76 that they tried to take down? I know they tried to prevent Reagan from becoming the front-runner and at the ’76 convention in Kansas City, I was there, we all know what happened. 

I mean, there’s no doubt that the Republican didn’t want any part of Reagan in ’76 and they bit the bullet in 1980.  But have you ever seen, I mean, Trump is a far and away front-runner.  Have you ever, in your life, do you recall a party, either one or name your pick of some oddball party, try to take down their own front run?  Never seen anything like this before, have you?

Establishment Republicans want Donald Trump to drop out of the race; they want Jeb Bush to stay in it to win it. Precisely the opposite needs to happen as soon as humanly possible…

As Rush Limbaugh said this morning, if Bush had Trump’s numbers, the establishment would already have declared the race over.

Trump’s comments about Bush are an acid test for the establishment Republicans who want another Bush presidency: if Jeb can’t stop the Trump juggernaut, how will he stop Hillary’s far more powerful juggernaut? If he can’t rebut Trump on Iraq and the war on terror, how can he hope to do so against Clinton, backed by the full power of the mainstream media? The same holds true for the entire Republican field: if they can’t defeat Trump’s economic populist nonsense in a Republican primary, how can they hope to defeat the same proposals from the left? Trump should not be the Republican candidate because he’s simply not conservative – but he’s providing a stiff test for anyone who would grab the brass ring…

Jeb and the rest of the establishment cling to the slim hope that Trump will somehow implode. He won’t. Neither will Carson. If they want to stop the Trump machine, they’ll need to drop the latest Bush in favor of somebody new. And as Iowa draws closer, that inevitable inflection point does too.

I can easily envision any number of events that would cause me to absolutely refuse to support even the candidates I like a great deal. If Bobby Jindal, let’s say, were to come out tomorrow and say that he would only nominate judges who promised to uphold Roe v. Wade, he would without question lose my support. If Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) came out in favor of funding Planned Parenthood tomorrow, I would be done with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). If Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) stated that his favorite President of all time was Jimmy Carter, that would be the last of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for me. If Carly Fiorina said that she believed that everyone should pay at least 30% of their income in federal taxes every year, I would quickly become an enemy of Carly Fiorina…

For all the manifold sins of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), he has never in his life had a 4 month stretch of time in which he has betrayed as many conservative principles as Trump has since entering the race, but Trump’s supporters are still there.

So at this point, it is a matter of honest curiosity to me, and I think this is something the Trump supporters ought to answer at least to themselves: Is there anything Trump might do or say that would cause you to stop supporting him?

If you can’t spell it out to yourself ahead of time then you’re not an informed voter or principled person of any stripe: you’re a fan of a celebrity. And what you’re watching right now isn’t a political campaign to you, it’s a slightly more sophisticated reality show than The Kardashians.

But what does it signal that so much much of the Republican party’s voter base has so enthusiastically supported a non-conservative for this long, and that Trump has now become a serious contender for its nomination? From this one might reasonably conclude that being a conservative may not be an essential requirement for the Republican party’s presidential candidate. 

And what that, in turn, suggests is that the GOP of 2015 is not a party that is particularly driven by ideological or policy commitments, but instead is motivated in large part by vacuous, reactionary Trumpism. GOP elites may be trying to rescue the Republican party from Donald Trump, but what if there’s nothing left to save? 

Elites themselves bear some responsibility here. What happened to the GOP happened long before Trump’s campaign, in part because its elected leaders in Congress and elsewhere allowed and even encouraged it, harnessing the base’s untempered enthusiasms to their own purposes over the years. It is more than a little bit ironic that the party’s establishment is now attacking Trump for doing roughly the same thing.

Trump isn’t the cause of the Republican party’s troubles so much as their avatar and spokesperson. And the Republican party’s Trump problem isn’t Trump so much as it is the Republican party itself. 

Via MFP.