There are some interesting, but only in a pathological sense, numbers in a recent poll from Public Policy Polling about beliefs held by Republicans, and by Donald "Rump" Trump supporters in particular:
Our new poll finds that Trump is benefiting from a GOP electorate that thinks Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born in another country, and that immigrant children should be deported. 66% of Trump's supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12% that grant he's a Christian. 61% think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21% who accept that he was. And 63% want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, to only 20% who want to keep things the way they are. And 63% want to amend the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, to only 20% who want to keep things the way they are.
Trump's beliefs represent the consensus among the GOP electorate. 51% overall want to eliminate birthright citizenship. 54% think President Obama is a Muslim. And only 29% grant that President Obama was born in the United States. (our emphasis)On that last point, to demonstrate how terminally clueless (or willfully ignorant) Republicans are, the pollsters report this comparison (click on image to enlarge):
Um, as most people who don't play with their toes know, President Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (USA! USA!) "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, eh. But, Obama ... different! Martin Longman (BooMan) explains in some detail how this ignorance gap was engineered:
What the Republicans did was create an electorate that didn’t previously exist. Sure, the gullible people were there already, but they weren’t misinformed and they weren’t sorted politically.
The reason this was done by Republicans, I believe, is because the conservative movement has determined that they can hold onto power a little longer despite demographic changes and the browning of America if they can sharply increase their share of the white vote. And the way to do that is not to figure out what these people need and offer ways to give it to them, but to get them to think more in terms of their whiteness. Whites go over here in the right column and everyone else goes over there in the left column. [snip]
It’s a transparent effort to ramp up racial animosity as a way, probably the only way, to avoid softening their positions on their conservative ideology. If they don’t do this, then they’ll have to recraft their appeal, which means that conservatives will lose control of the Republican Party– one of only two viable parties in the country.
Once you understand what has happened in this way, everything else begins to make more sense. And you can see why the RNC’s advice to pass comprehensive immigration reform was rejected by the Republican-led House of Representatives because they’re the ones benefiting from the racial polarization of the country and higher levels of tribal thinking among whites. Senators, by and large, do not benefit from this since they have to run statewide.
Now, this leads to an interesting place, because, looked at this way, Donald Trump is almost a savior for conservatism despite being a heretic on several items on the traditional conservative movement’s agenda. He’s a savior because he’s completely internalized the strategy that will allow them to continue on without moderating to appeal to a changing electorate: make whites think more about their whiteness. [snip]
So, Trump helped create and sort this ridiculously misinformed Republican electorate and now he is the clear beneficiary. But he was by no means alone. It was, essentially, a group project that the Republican Establishment signed off on when they thought it could benefit them in beating Obama. (our emphasis)For all their decades- long efforts to stay in power by feeding nonsense to an ever angrier, ever more ignorant white base, it's a fitting reward that "establishment" Republicans are now being consumed by the tiger they thought they could control.
BONUS: David Corn has a good read, similar thrust.
