WhatFinger


And he'll approach the race against Hillary in the same way.

How Trump won: He didn't let the media mis-define him, and neither did you



It may not be officially official until the Republican convention in July, but Donald Trump last week passed the 1,237-pledged delegate mark, essentially making him the Republican nominee for president. To get a sense of just how extraordinary this is, think back to last summer and fall when the entire world of political punditry was so sure he had no chance, they treated this belief as if it was an unassailable fact. But Trump just rolled on as the candidates dubbed by the media as the “serious” contenders fell away. Scott Walker never even made it to the Iowa caucuses. Jeb Bush was an early drop-out. Marco Rubio didn’t come close in his native Florida. John Kasich won nowhere aside from his own home state of Ohio. And Ted Cruz put up a really good fight – pretty much the only good fight – but when his firewall collapsed in Indiana he knew it was over.
How did Trump do it? No matter how many times the media and the political class hyperventilated over something he said or did, it made no difference. He just kept rolling all the way to the nomination. I believe he won for several important reasons. One is that he didn’t concern himself with pleasing the media. They worked overtime to create the perception that he had no chance and was not even a serious candidate. Trump did not panic and overreact every time they did this. In fact, quite the opposite, he let it be known that he had little regard for them and really didn’t care what they said. Your typical establishment political consultant would tell you this is a terrible mistake. Never anger the media! They buy ink by the barrel! Trump’s instincts told him something else, and Trump was right. He kept being himself. They kept not liking it. He kept winning. The other thing Trump did was to make sure he had a substantive message, even though the media refused to tell you about his real proposals. He wants to lower the top tax rate in this country from 39 percent to 25 percent.

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He wants to achieve real energy independence by supporting nuclear energy development, natural gas and fracking – while Hillary lectures us to reduce our consumption because of “climate change.” And he wants to introduce real market-based reforms into health care, while Hillary just wants to keep defending ObamaCare. The fact that the media wouldn’t cover these proposals didn’t stop Trump from talking about them, and as we saw at rally after rally, he connected with Americans as he did. You could be forgiven if you think all he did was “tap into people’s anger,” because that’s what’s usually said about him. But he actually did much more than that. He showed that he understands what people are concerned about, and he’s prepared to actually do something about it. This is how he won. He didn’t let anyone else define him, and he didn’t back down from the very real ideas that inspired his candidacy in the first place. So when you hear people now say that he can’t possibly win, remember what they were saying last summer and fall. And ask yourself who you want to bet against: Donald Trump? Or them?


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