Donald Trump’s unprecedented romp across the political hellscape continues. Now a new poll from Huffpost/YouGov finds that Trump’s groundswell of support is what we’ve suspected it to be all along—more a cult of personality than an issues-based campaign.
The Huffington Post reports:
Obama supports the idea of universal health care. So does Trump, who said in the 1990s, “I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.”
Opinions on health care are deeply polarized, and policies tend to get more support from the right when Obama’s name isn’t attached — Kentucky residents, for instance, dislike “Obamacare,” but feel considerably less hostility toward Kynect, the state-run health exchange.
The same principle holds true in this survey. Democratic support for universal health care dwarfs Republican support among respondents who were told Obama endorsed the policy. But respondents from both parties were about equally likely to agree with universal health care when they were told Trump supported it. Republicans were significantly more likely to agree with Trump, while the percentage of Democrats who said they weren’t sure how they felt about universal health care jumped from 8 percent to 33 percent when Trump was the one endorsing the idea.
In the case of Republicans, support for universal health care jumps from 16 percent when they’re told Obama wants it to 44 percent when they’re told Trump likes it.
Let that sink in: nearly half of Republicans say they back socialized medicine because it keeps them in alignment with Donald Trump.
In fairness, many voters tend to vest their trust in personalities rather than policies or ideologies. When Rand Paul mounted a filibuster over President Obama’s promiscuous use of drones, he precipitated an opinion shift among Republicans. That happened because conservatives trusted Paul and also because the issue was framed as overreach by President Obama, pitting a personality they liked versus a personality they loathed. Likewise, even as he federalized education and increased spending, George W. Bush garnered broad Republican support during his first term because he was their guy.
But this goes beyond the tribalism of politics. We’re talking about universal health care, for goodness sake, an issue that conservatives have spent the last six years rallying against. How many elected Republicans, from the Tea Partiers of 2010 to the class of 2014 to interspersed wins like Scott Brown and David Jolly, owe their political careers to discontent over Obamacare? And the president’s health law doesn’t even provide universal health coverage; it’s just a step in that direction.
Yet a motor-mouthed charlatan crash-lands a helicopter on an Iowa stage and suddenly half of Republicans are ready to drop arms in one of the most defining policy fights of our generation. And the chilling part is that Trump hasn’t backed off his call for universal health coverage. How many will mimic his position simply because he’s Donald Trump?
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