{"id":20410,"date":"2015-10-08T15:04:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T22:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=20410"},"modified":"2015-10-08T15:12:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T22:12:11","slug":"when-is-it-fair-to-blame-gop-voters-for-carson-and-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=20410","title":{"rendered":"When Is It Fair To Blame GOP Voters For Carson and Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"n-TRUMP-CARSON-large570.jpg\"<\/p>\n

A question for everyone here, but I’m especially interested in what conservatives (or even conservatives relative to the “Alas” norm) think:<\/p>\n

At what point, assuming they continue to be the leading candidates, ((Recent polls<\/a> show that only Trump and Carson are standing out in poll after poll, although certainly Rubio, Fiorina, and Bush are contenders. Unless there’s a major shake-up in the race – and maybe there will be, it’s still early! – everyone else seems like an also-ran at best)) is it fair to take Donald Trump’s and Ben Carson’s expressed views, as a general snapshot of what Republican base voters favor?<\/p>\n

I haven’t bothered writing about what either Trump or Carson say, because I’ve been assuming that they’re flash-in-the-pan candidates, oddball artifacts of the nomination process rather than an actual expression of what the GOP in general favors. Or maybe just GOP base voters having a bit of fun before settling for someone bland and plausibly electable.<\/p>\n

But that’s how I felt months ago. Trump started rising in June. It’s been a while.<\/p>\n

But probably he’ll still fizzle out to nothing in the end. Right?<\/p>\n

But if<\/em> Trump fails to fizzle out, at what point does it become fair to take Trump and Carson as representing what a large portion of GOP voters want<\/em>?<\/p>\n

(And for the reverse question: I think it’s now fair to take Clinton’s policies in general as a reasonable snapshot of what centrist Democratic base voters want, and Sander’s policies in general as a reasonable snapshot of what progressive Democrats want.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A question for everyone here, but I’m especially interested in what conservatives (or even conservatives relative to the “Alas” norm) think: At what point, assuming they continue to be the leading candidates, ((Recent polls show that only Trump and Carson … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20415,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20410\/revisions\/20415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}