You’ll notice that there are two groups of people criticizing Donald Trump’s decision to make RNC Chairman Reince Priebus his White House chief of staff. The conservative NeverTrumpers, who are eagerly pouncing on any scrap of news they can throw in his supporters’ faces, and the liberal media, which is playing the same game. Among Trump supporters, there is no significant outcry.
Why is that?
Well, for one thing, it’s because there is a strain of willful ignorance about Trump supporters, even now. Even after Trump’s victory, the condescension remains. One newspaper ran an op-ed titled, “We heard you, Trump supporters; We just thought better of you.” How arrogant can you get?
Because these people refuse, even now, to believe anything but the worst about their fellow Americans, they are apparently going to spend the next couple of months – or beyond – in a permanent state of mystification. They cannot entertain for a moment that Trump’s voters might have cast their ballots with their eyes wide open. That they might be a little more intelligent and informed than commonly assumed.
You can see this in the stories where pundits speculate on how Trump’s base will react when and if the president-elect fails to magically turn back the clock on American manufacturing. Make no mistake, this kind of thinking is no different from snide Republicans who made the same remarks about Obama’s base in 2008. Back then, such talk was called “racist.” Today, it is perfectly acceptable in liberal, mainstream, and conservative circles.
Trump did lose ground with college graduates as compared to previous Republican nominees, but he still won 43% of their vote. Furthermore, he beat Clinton among Americans making more than $50,000 a year, while she won with those making less. This statistic alone is a reminder for the pundits not to paint all Trump voters with the same brush.
There is considerable hope and trust in Trump that he will govern less chaotically than he ran. No one is interested in watching our politics descend into more gridlock and mutual disgust. It’s time to get serious.
By choosing Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, Trump is already proving that he is focused on bringing the same calculation to the White House that he brought to his business empire. It would seem that all the elitists in the peanut gallery would want to congratulate Trump on the appointment instead of mocking him with “drain the swamp” comments.
One of these days, they’ll wake up and realize that the election’s over.
