Donald Trump has been the "great disruptor" of the 2016 presidential race — and while Republicans continue to handle him the wrong way, Democrats are aggressively wooing the billionaire developer's supporters, says Peggy Noonan, who was special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
"I do not understand the inability or refusal of Republican leaders to take Mr. Trump seriously. They take his numbers seriously — they can read a poll — but they think, as [former Florida Gov.] Bush said, that his support is all about anger, angst and theatrics," Noonan writes in
The Wall Street Journal.
"That's part of the story, but the other, more consequential part has to do with real policy issues. The establishment refuses to see that, because to admit it is to implicate themselves and their leadership.
"Political consultants can't see it because they don't think issues matter — not to them and certainly not to the dumb voters. But issues do matter, and Mr. Trump has functioned this year not as a great communicator or great compromiser, but as the great disruptor."
Noon writes that it reflects badly on the Republican Party, he has become the party's "2016 thought leader."
"[Sen.] Bernie Sanders has, in a way, had the wit to see this, which is why he said he is reaching out to Trump supporters."
Noonan says Trump, who has remained Republican presidential front-runner since last summer, "brags that he has brought up great questions and forced other candidates to face them and sometimes change their stands — and he has."
"He changed the debate on illegal immigration. He said he'd build a wall and close the border and as the months passed and his competitors saw his surge, they too were suddenly, clearly, aggressively for ending illegal immigration," Noonan writes.
Mr. Trump touched an important nerve in opposing the political correctness that has angered the American people for a quarter century.
He changed the debate when he asked for a pause in Muslim immigration until America 'can figure out what's going on.' In the age of terror, that looked suspiciously like common sense. Americans do not want America to become what Europe is becoming."
Noonan says that Reagan rightfully and successfully reached out to Democrats in 1984 — and those who crossed over are still referred to as "Reagan Democrats."
"The [GOP] candidates are starting to throw hard punches. They're all trying to show they can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee — a necessary talent if you make it to the general election," she says.
"No point in hand-wringing or telling them to stop on the grounds that what they're doing will produce, for the Democrats, a badly bloodied GOP nominee … The new Democratic Party, the one of the progressive left, has only a single unifying principle: winning. Hillary Clinton's opponents haven't laid a glove on her, and won't."