Hey, Republicans, stop hating on Trump voters

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump smiles as he has his photograph taken with supporters after being endorsed at a regional police union meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Will Republicans please stop insulting Trump voters? Just stop. I know that many hate Trump, but his voters too?

Mitt Romney derides Trump voters as “suckers.”  Others have sneered that Trump has an army of “low information voters” who have been “duped,” and that “these people” shouldn’t be able to decide on the fate of a Grand Old Party.  Trump’s voters, the political class screams, have “hijacked the Republican Party.”

Another conservative commentator complained the other day that many of these voters have never even voted before and they “are not even Republicans.”  Huh?   

Isn’t it a good thing that Trump is steering millions of new voters away from the Democrats and attracting them to the GOP?  I thought we were told Republicans lost in 2012 because so many conservatives stayed home.  Here they are.

The GOP’s mighty establishment wing – the people who get rich off the game of politics -- pretend that theirs is the party of the working class, of blue collar virtue, and hard work, but now that the workers they supposedly represent are in revolt, apparently the problem is the voters not the party.  This is insanity.

This is like the executives at Coca Cola blaming the stupid public for not liking “New Coke.”  What kind of a company blames its customers when things go wrong?  Inside Washington, there are no term limits on stupidity.

Former House Republican majority leader Tom DeLay advised on Fox this past Friday that Republicans should do all they can to stop Trump from getting a majority (though he will likely have a plurality) and then at the convention,  throw Trump and his troublemaking voters under the bus and pick someone who got millions of fewer votes than Trump did.  Delay’s point is that the party and its delegates, not the voters, should choose who the nominee is.  He seemed to be saying: it’s our club and we make the rules.  (Funny, Republicans just a few weeks ago were guffawing that Democrats had rigged their primary process.)

The rules of the party apparently say that Delay is right.  So the master plan is to let the elites decide what’s best for us.

Gee.  I thought that’s what liberals do!

I’m no Trump enthusiast by any means – and I agree with some of what he says and believe that he is flat out wrong about the benefits of trade and immigration – which are substantial.  Trump is often offensive and unpredictable.

But the Trump haters ought to get out and attend a Trump rally.

You will meet truck drivers, and soccer moms, and veterans, and taxicab drivers, and immigrants, and construction workers, and young people, and not a lot of Wall Streeters or political consultants.  They are patriotic. They are seething in anger at both parties.

We've had eight years of a mostly failed Republican president followed by eight years of a failed Democrat in the White House.

Over this whole period many of these voters haven't seen a pay increase and many have seen their incomes fall -- while GOP political consultants rake in millions for losing.

The fact that four of the wealthiest counties in America are inside or near the Washington Beltway says everything voters need to know about how they are being bled dry by government.

Whenever I say anything nice about Trump I get scowls and lectures from my conservative friends in Washington that Trump voters don’t believe in the principles of the Republican Party.

Wait. The Republicans in Congress just passed a budget that spends tens of billions more than when Democrats ran Congress. The GOP budget increases the deficit. I thought that key principles of the GOP were less government, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility.

The Republicans have only themselves to blame for this working class revolt.  These are voters who are horrified by what Obama has done to our country and they put their faith in Republicans to fix things – and they didn’t.  Worse, they haven’t even try. 

And now the Republican brain trust is hatching a plan to effectively disenfranchise the Trump voters altogether.   I hope I’m wrong, but when the GOP loses again with this strategy, and Hillary Clinton is being sworn into office, the party leaders will scratch their heads and ask: “Gee, where did all those Trump voters go?”