Donald Trump and the Republican voters: Who did not bark in the night?

For money, John Zogby is the most reliable pollster in America: I have followed his polls and analyses closely through the past four presidential election cycles and he has never been wrong on any major trend or conclusion in any of them.

Now look at what Mr. Zogby has to say in his most recent poll on Republican voters and their presidential preferences published in Forbes on December 9: “A new poll of Republican primary and caucus voters by Zogby Analytics shows developer Donald Trump widening his nationwide lead to 25 points over his nearest rival, neurologist Dr. Ben Carson.”

The new Zogby Poll of 271 likely GOP voters had the following results:

Donald Trump 38%
Ben Carson 13
Marco Rubio 12
Ted Cruz 8
Jeb Bush 7
Chris Christie 4
Carly Fiorina 3
Others/Not Sure 16

What does this poll really mean? It means Change is coming to America.

As I explain in my 2015 book, Cycles of Change: The Three Great Cycles of American History & the Coming Crises That Will Lead to the Fourth, (Amazon-Kindle) the old 40-year Republican establishment of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush lost its control over the federal government in 2008: That era is dead. It’s not coming back.

Note that this poll appeared after Trump had announced he would temporarily suspend all Muslim immigration into the United States following the San Bernardino massacre, and after Jeb Bush, Mario Rubio and Chris Christie had weighed into him in response.

In Britain, 300,000 people have so far signed a petition demanding that Trump would be banned from the country. It would be an interesting test of British opinion, if English nationalists should launch a counter petition demanding that Trump be permitted to enter Britain, at least in the name of Free Speech. I do not venture to guess how many, or how few, signatures such a petition would get.

There has certainly been a firestorm of criticism against Trump within the United States, over his new stand against Muslim immigration, as you would expect. But what has the result been among Republican potential primary voters? They have flocked back to Trump.

Karl Rove, Roger Ailes, Newt Gingrich and all the other pillars of the Old Republican Establishment (ORE) must be having strokes and brain aneurysms.

Does no one listen to Rush Limbaugh and his loyal legion talk show brainwashers and conditioners anymore? What about Dr. Krauthammer and his 400 newspaper outlets.

Suddenly the Republican conservative grassroots are not responding the way the way they were supposed to anymore.

These people were never tempted by Pat Buchanan, they have remained cold to both Ron and Rand Paul, the simplicities and absurdities of Ayn Rand and her Libertarian devotees hold no allure for them. But they have flocked to Trump. And they are staying with him.

Despite expenditures of more than $100 million through the Heritage Foundation alone to keep the Tea Party activists firmly within the bounds of free markets, open borders orthodoxy, Trump continues to woo that core away from the party establishment. It is increasingly feasible he will win the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland.

Even if the ORE manage to block him from that, do not doubt that he would then launch a Third Party insurrection that, at the very least, would lead the GOP’s activist core – the same voters who won its congressional majorities in the past two midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, to stay at home in November 2016.

If that happens, don’t limit your thoughts to the GOP losing control of the Senate, the precious all important GOP control of the House of Representatives will be toast.

Those Republican primary potential voters who have flocked back to Trump did not heed their old leaders’ calls to abandon him in outrage. In their renewed loyalty to Trump, they are the Dog That Didn’t Bark in the Night in the famous Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Inspector Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

Holmes recognized that the dog did not bark when it should have because the mystery figure who stole the horse Silver Blaze was not a stranger to the dog, but a familiar figure to it, a friend. That is why Republican voters are not barking in outrage at Donald Trump. They have no faith in the old Republican policies that left their geographic, political and even economic borders wide open.

They have no faith in the host of candidates endlessly repeating how all they have to do is cut taxes, cut government waste and gut Social Secuirity and Medicare for Arcadia to be restored. Change is coming to America – The remarkably resilient campaign of Donald Trump is its Prophetic precursor, its Outlier, its Straw in the Wind.

As I wrote in Cycles of Change, the times in America are finally changing.

Follow Martin Sieff at www.martinsieff.com