The same message pervades his style. Trump talks endlessly about his polls, because the polls stress that he is strong enough to protect his voters. He speaks extemporaneously and often crassly in a stream-of-consciousness way, which has many pitfalls but emphasizes that his views are unprepared, authentic statements of his views and that he will thus carry out his promises to protect his audience. He responds aggressively to every attack, no matter how minor, conveying the sense that he will also aggressively protect his voters.
All this explains why the prior Republican attacks on Trump’s positions and style have gone nowhere. It is not because he is a Teflon candidate. It is because, to his voters, these attacks have stressed what, to them, is Trump’s strength.
The recent Rubio-led attacks on Trump have been more telling because their nature is different. These new attacks say, Trump is a con artist who will not protect you because he defrauded students at Trump University and hired foreigners over American workers. These attacks resonate more than prior attacks because they undermine Trump’s core claim that he will protect his voters.
However, the Super Tuesday results indicate that these attacks have, so far, been ineffective. The likely reason is that, even if these attacks create doubts about whether Trump will follow through on promises to protect his voters, he remains the Republican candidate who at least says he values protecting them over adhering to ideology.
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