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 The fact that Romney went on to capture his party’s nomination
should be, at the very least, one basic reason why Trump’s recent
surge can’t be dismissed as the aberration that so many pundits and
party strategists claim it is.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Trump, who will command center
stage at the first Republican presidential debate on Thursday, is
going to wind up the party’s nominee a year from now. There are
significant obstacles in his path: his history of supporting liberal
causes, his sclerotic campaign organization and his limited appeal -
so far - to a narrow swath of Republican voters.
Still, some Republicans, especially those outside of Washington, are
urging the party to take Trump’s bid seriously, arguing that it’s
not out of the question that he could shock the world and win the
primary.
Craig Robinson, the former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party,
sees echoes of the current president in Trump's run, saying Trump is
another product of the media environment.
"Obama was a brand. Donald Trump is a brand. At the end of the day
it was really cool to be an Obama supporter and really uncool to be
a McCain or Romney supporter," said Robinson, who is neutral in the
Republican primary.
 Steve Deace, an influential conservative radio host in Iowa, said
those within the Republican party who are dismissing Trump's chances
of securing the Republican presidential nomination “are
underestimating just how fed up the base is with the feckless
actions of this political party.”
Trump, who has made incendiary comments about Mexican immigrants, is
dominating polls that suggest he is riding a wave of anti-immigrant
and anti-establishment fervor. The big question is whether he can
ride that wave all the way to the Republican nominating convention
in Cleveland, Ohio, in July 2016.
ROOM TO GROW
To do that, "he’s going to need to do one of the harder things in
politics - bring scores of new voters into the primary voting
process," Deace said.
That’s because, while Trump’s support within the party at the moment
appears to be relatively substantial compared to the rest of the
presidential field, it is also limited.
He attracts male voters who are less educated, less affluent, and
less religious than the Republican electorate as a whole, according
to a Reuters/Ipsos survey of almost 2,000 Republicans conducted last
month.
It showed 61 percent of Trump supporters to be male and almost half
of those surveyed in the poll said they weren’t religious. Over half
had not attended college and almost 20 percent earned less than
$50,000 a year.
To win the nomination, Trump would need to widen his appeal by
attracting social conservatives in greater numbers than he’s doing
now as well as more upscale, college-educated voters and women
voters.
To that end, Trump is showing signs of wanting to be more than a
celebrity contender. Slowly, he’s beginning to build organizations
in the key early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire to compete
for voters.
 In Iowa, Trump has hired Chuck Laudner, a well respected operative
who in 2012 worked for the underfunded and little-known Rick
Santorum, the candidate who shocked the national political scene by
tying Romney in the caucuses.
A religious conservative, Laudner signing on with Trump was viewed
by some in Iowa as a surprise and it could mean that Trump will be
able to expand his base of support. Last month, Trump raised
eyebrows when he told an Iowa audience that he had never sought
forgiveness from God for anything.
"I don't bring God into that picture. I don't," Trump said.
“Chuck Laudner’s a true believer in the Christian right,” said
Douglas Gross, a Republican strategist in Iowa. “Ideologically, [he
and Trump] couldn’t be farther apart."
In New Hampshire, Trump already has a chairman in each county in the
state.
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“I’ve been part of campaigns for the past 20 years in New Hampshire,
and I’m seeing all the right things being done to put him in a very
good position for the primary,” said Lou Garguilo, a county co-chair
for Trump.
Of the candidate’s appeal, Garguilo said, “What I love about him is
he’s a successful businessman who’s built a very large business. He
speaks plainly, He talks about issues that are of grave concern to
many of us, things like healthcare, border security, China.”
Most important, “He tells it like it is,” Garguilo said.
STRIKING A CHORD
There’s little doubt that Trump has tapped into a segment of the
party that is concerned about immigration, trade, outsourcing, and
the erosion of middle-class jobs in the United States.
Another successful businessman, Ross Perot, voiced similar concerns.
In his independent bid for president in 1992, he secured 19 percent
of the vote. His presence helped define the issues in the race.
Trump is doing something similar for the Republicans. “Right now,
this election is about immigration," said Vincent DeVito, a
Republican election lawyer and strategist who worked for Romney in
2012. "Donald Trump made it about immigration."
Trump’s anti-establishment appeal and his contempt for party
orthodoxy are also seen as drawcards for many voters frustrated by a
political elite they see as disconnected from the issues that matter
most to middle class Americans.
In a CBS News poll released this week, Trump scored the highest
among Republican candidates (30 percent) with voters who said they
were angry at Washington.
“The environment is ripe for anti-Washington, anti-politician
candidacy. The more the Republican establishment circles the wagons,
the more people are attracted to him,” said Joe Trippi, the
strategist who helped engineer Democrat Howard Dean’s insurgent
presidential bid in 2004.
Trippi said that the large Republican field — there are 17 declared
candidates — could work to Trump’s advantage, meaning he would need
a smaller share of the Republican electorate to win primaries.
“However improbable it is that Trump emerges as the nominee, I would
not bet against him,” Trippi said. “He can win states with 25
percent or 30 percent of the vote.”
All of it is easier said than done. That same CBS News poll showed
Trump to have the highest negative ratings of any Republican in the
field.
There have been other recent celebrity candidate flameouts. Eight
years ago, the contenders who were leading the national polls during
the summer of 2007 were Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York mayor, and
Fred Thompson, the former star of TV’s “Law and Order.”
Both were gone from the race within six months.
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Emily Flitter; Additional reporting
by Steve Holland, editing by Ross Colvin)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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