Reihan Salam made a belated but useful observation this morning on a very lively Face the Nation after Trump went on an extended tirade about well … everything:
SALAM: Well, the genius of — the genius of Ted Cruz is also the fact that if you look at the Republican Party, if you’re looking at the elite side, fundamentally you have these libertarian instincts. And what Donald Trump has demonstrated is that this libertarianism does not run very deep with actual Republican voters. Not very deep at all. So what Ted Cruz has done, and you see this actually in his fundraising, what he’s done is he’s managed to get some of that kind of libertarian, business class, Wall Street Republican support, while also getting that kind of populist, national support, a bit of that, and that also means that you get small donors, as well as big donors.
Trump, however, to me, what he’s done, whether or not he wins, I have no idea, honestly. But whether or not he wins, he’s demonstrated that that libertarianism, you know, cutting top rates, cutting tax — gains taxes, all of this stuff doesn’t actually matter to real life Republican voters. Forty percent of Republican voters say that they want upper income taxpayers to pay higher taxes. Whoever do you see in a Republican primary come out and say, you know what, I’m going to leave the top rate alone and I’m going to focus on middle class tax cuts. Something like that.
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