Trump supporters and "RINOs"

[izixs]

This kind of gets to the real nature of what is 'conservative' and 'republican' to the core supporters of the Republican party. Its not about ideology, its about identity. The being a 'guy like us', not who checks the right boxes. Its why when W. was at his peak he was always winning the question of 'who would you prefer to have a beer with?' He was seen as that fella that's just like them. The mannerisms and word salad of the second Bush just fed into that. It infuriated everyone else and had us calling out why the hell anyone took him seriously. But gosh darn it, he was their guy, and anyone that opposed him and him being their guy was a no good liberal and thus the enemy. My memories of the Reagan years are a little more sketchy, but I recall a similar identity politics at play.

So in the primaries, Trump played easily into the mold of the core voter. Not on policy or knowledge of the issues, but by acting like they wanted to. The constant railing against political correctness is what they like to do. The calling Clinton crooked? Same thing. Trump could believe in doing away with capitalism entirely, replacing it with a soviet style command economy, as long as he railed against illegals enough and promised to only put his opponents (aka, the liberals who are not like his supporters culturally or in behavior) in the gulags.