The cause of the Trump surge.

[Fuzzy Bear]

It's mostly the first.  If he was just taking a millionaire's mindless ego-trip, he'd be Steve Forbes, who never captured the attention of folks as Trump has.

What Middle America sees is a government that wishes to enrich the top 1% at all costs and subsidize the poor so that they behave reasonably well and so we don't have food riots by hungry, homeless people, as there are in Third World countries.  Middle America sees their manufacturing jobs dry up, while cheap foreign goods flood our marketplace through "free trade" agreements and they are told that this is progress.  Middle America sees a government ready to send their kids to fight a war with Iran who hasn't attacked up, after being involved in two (2) long wars that haven't accomplished anything good that they can easily explain.  Their taxes aren't going up, but their wages aren't, either, and their healthcare costs and ACCESS to healthcare is a dicey thing, while one party offers a healthcare program no one can easily explain (Obamacare) while the other really doesn't care if you get to see a doctor or not because THEY'RE going to see a doctor, and that's what they care about.  They see social changes ushered in by Courts (SSM) and the privileges of the rich to buy politicians instituted by Courts (CITIZENS UNITED), the latter reversing the will of the people's representatives.  They see unappealing Presidential candidates, few of them having done anything with their lives besides becoming lawyers, getting elected and re-elected to something, or serving in government as an appointed something-or-other.  Of the businessmen, one of them (Jeb Bush) hasn't really been successful; he's been propped up by his Daddy until such time as he could enter politics.  

They see illegal immigrants pouring across our border with Mexico, and seeing a border fence not getting built, even when their elected representatives said it would be built, and they are lectured as being xenophobic when they point out the burden of crime and money this problem brings, just as they are lectured about being homophobic when SSM is ushered in (never mind what their Bible might say) and when they are lectured as racist when they suggest that it is the rioters themselves in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD that are responsible for the riots, and that the real threat to black lives comes not from the Police, but from remorseless criminals in their own communities, many of whom are heavily armed and who possess minimal regard for human life.  It's the lecures that's the salt in the wound, because it's the part where they'ree condescended to and told that they really don't know what they're observing.

This is what Trump is tapping into.  This is who doesn't care that Trump dissed McCain big-time, or gave out Linsdwy Graham's phone number.  He's a Northern version of George Wallace, not that he's a segregationist, but that he's an anti-elitist.  Wallace once said, "I'll let you in on a little secret:  Those fancy-dan bureaucrats in Washington, DC don't run and take a flying leap into their britches every morning, they put them on one leg at a time just like you and me!"  Trump is making the same sort of appeal to folks who, rightly are wrongly, are tired of being lectured by eletes who don't care what Middle America (the people who do the work of society) want, and they don't do what they promised to do when they were elected with Middle America's votes.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Distinctly the second.

This. There's always a swoon of low info voters for candidates who purportedly "tell it like it is". They tend to fade.

How is Trump going to maintain the media attention by invoking increasingly inflamatory statements for the next 6 months without people getting bored and/or turned off? Answer, he won't.

Likewise, I wouldn't hold hope of him doing well in the debates.

The one thing to separate him from being another Bachmann is his fortune. That'll keep him in the game as long as he wants (i.e. until the field has winnowed out to a few real contenders and his showings become humiliating).

"Low information voters."  You mean folks who need elites explaining to them what is good for them, because they are either too lazy to figure it out for themselves or too stupid to know better?

[Fuzzy Bear]

Distinctly the second.

This. There's always a swoon of low info voters for candidates who purportedly "tell it like it is". They tend to fade.

How is Trump going to maintain the media attention by invoking increasingly inflamatory statements for the next 6 months without people getting bored and/or turned off? Answer, he won't.

Likewise, I wouldn't hold hope of him doing well in the debates.

The one thing to separate him from being another Bachmann is his fortune. That'll keep him in the game as long as he wants (i.e. until the field has winnowed out to a few real contenders and his showings become humiliating).

"Low information voters."  You mean folks who need elites explaining to them what is good for them, because they are either too lazy to figure it out for themselves or too stupid to know better?

People who follow public affairs even less than the typical American, and are easily swayed by lowest common denominator sound bites, at least until the race heats up and they start paying attention about a month before election day.

You mean folks who have figured out that someone other than themselves will profit from "free trade" as they drive by their factory that was shut down and the manufacturing moved to Mexico or China?  You mean the people who have been victimized by illegal aliens committing crimes because they cannot work legally in the US?  You mean people who see unlimited political ads on TV and billionaires accompanying their favorite candidates to key gatherings acting like their NASCAR sponsors and wonder why it is harder for them to afford some of what they have come to consider to by a part of middle class standard of living?

A lot of "high information" many voters have is noise to obliterate the bottom line that the person trying to stay in the middle class in America is being deliberately screwed by elites who, through condescending lecturing as to how John Q. doesn't really understand how economics really works, and please trust them with their trade and immigration policies.  The low information voters know what they need to know, which is (A) the top 1% are getting richer, (B) the bottom 99% are getting further away from the top 1% and (C) this allow the top 1% to be even more predatory in their business and pricing practices.  The elites that, in effect, persecute the middle class view the middle class of America as unable to percieve when they are being screwed.  

[Fuzzy Bear]

Reading Fuzzybear's posts makes me realize why low-income southern whites are staunch Republicans.

But that does not explain why non-southern whites aren´t

For the record, I'm a native New Yorker, and while I am a registered Republican, I have only voted Republican for President twice (Bush in 2000, McCain in 2008).  I'm a Kerry 2004 and Obama 2012 voter.

I am neither a Southerner (at least by birth) or a "staunch Republican".  I'm really a RINO, and anti-war.  But I am a social conservative on most issues, and I am concerned about consequences of unchecked illegal immigration into the US.  

In other words, I'm an independent thinker.

I am curious as to what CapoteMonster means by his comment.