Why the GOP needs to pay attention to Trump supporters

It’s funny that Ben Cohen mentions RedState.com a couple of times in this article because not long ago I had to unsubscribe from the Red State mailing list due to their irrational Trump Derangement Syndrome. Here’s Cohen:

Last month, National Review released its “Trump issue,” or rather its anti-Trump issue. RedState has been running nonstop anti-Trump coverage, to the satisfaction of its readership. Undoubtedly, Trump inspires great animosity; statistically, he is one of the most disliked politicians. However, Trump also inspires great affection among a subset of voters, and it isn’t the voters that you might think.

Noticeably absent from Trump’s New Hampshire victory speech were culture war staples like abortion and gay marriage. Nor were tax cuts or other fiscal conservative red meat being served up. Instead, Trump harped on trade, border security, and jobs. As S.E. Cupp pointed out, the typical Trump supporter is not a GOP hardliner, but what could more accurately be called a “Reagan Democrat.”

As Emily Elkins described it, “[p]olling data reveal that Trump supporters are more likely to be male, white, older, with less education but they are not more likely to be right-wing.”

These are older, blue-collar white voters, who have become disaffected from the present-day Democratic party; in fact, many of them are still registered Democrats (a group Trump does particularly well among).

This is also not a group that the Republican party can safely ignore. They have voted Democratic in the past and could easily return to that party in the future. Blue-collar white voters are also prominent in the key swing states that the Republicans need in order to win the White House (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). The Republican Party should make a serious effort to figure out what issues are important to these voters and how it can appeal to them.

Read more: American Thinker