Charlotte Allen writes: I went to Stanford, and I voted for Donald Trump. So did my husband. He went to Yale…
The common wisdom is that the majority of Trump’s supporters are barely literate knuckle-draggers. They’re “low-information,” in the words of Trump’s leading GOP rival nationwide, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. And it’s true that the largest education-level cohort among the Republicans who have consistently given Trump a double-digit lead in the primaries consists of people with high-school educations or less.
But in Massachusetts, home of Harvard and MIT and ranked as the No. 1 state in the union for residents possessing at least a bachelor’s degree, a CNN exit poll for the March 1 Republican primary showed Trump winning over 46% of voters with college degrees and even edging out Ohio “moderate” Gov. John Kasich (29% to 28%) among voters with postgraduate sheepskins. Exit polls in other states show similar results…
I’ve been a journalist by profession for more than three decades, and my reporting trips have taken me on many occasions across the vast coast-to-coast Rust Belt left behind as one U.S. company after another has outsourced its manufacturing operations to low-wage havens abroad. I’ve seen the construction industry, once a decently-paying bulwark for skilled working class American men without much educational aptitude, be turned over to non-English-speaking illegal immigrants toiling for labor contractors at under-the-table wages a fraction of what on the record employees make. The Republican establishment’s response to this has been pathetic: a “reformicon” agenda of using the refundable earned-income tax credit to hand out welfare to the displaced American workers.
Trump promises to turn America into a country that does what nations ought to do: Put the interests of its own citizens first. That’s why he’s promised to build a wall along our southern border and to change our tariff practices to comport with export-import reality. He has also managed to grow the Republican Party, apparently generating record primary turnouts and inspiring thousands of onetime Democrats to switch to the GOP. That’s why my husband and I will be casting our ballots for Trump in November should he become the Republican nominee. Some would call that “anger.” I call it “hope.”
