If it is Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton General Election, Latinos will play a decisive role [View all]
A very good analysis by Steve.
If it is Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton in the General Election, Latinos will play a decisive role and Trump will lose
Before I get into the crux of this article, I want to provide some background that I think will make a lot of things clear about why Trump has done some of the things he has done. After his comments back in the 2004-2005 time-frame that the Iraq war was a disaster, I thought he might run for President as a Democrat. Back then, Trump was a moderate who, in my opinion, could have chosen to run for either party.
The first mistake Trump made in trying to run for President was to decide to run as a Republican. I can imagine some of the reasons why and discussions had by his team as that decision was made, but that's mostly supposition on my part and immaterial. The result of deciding to run as a Republican meant that he had to try to appeal to Republican grassroots.
That would have posed a serious problem for any political team trying to solve the obstacles in his way to getting the nomination. As Trump's GOP primary opponents have said, he had expressed support for many Liberal positions in the past. If he reversed positions on those things he would immediately be seen as non-genuine and a hypocrite. Those perceptions are the exact opposite of those that team Trump was trying to create. His teams goals were to develop positions that Trump could adopt that would both signal to Conservative grass roots that he was one of them and deserved their support and would also not conflict with anything he had said previously.
It was clear to me with the birther position Trump took back during the run-up to the 2012 primary that this was a first attempt to reintroduce himself to Conservative grassroots as someone they should consider supporting. See my article on that here: TRUMP'S BIRTHER STRATEGY MAKES SENSE IF YOU UNDERSTAND ITS PURPOSE
The second position that Trump's team had him adopt was that of being radically against undocumented immigrants having a path to citizenship, and the creation of the wall on the border with Mexico.
http://steveleser.blogspot.com/2016/02/if-it-is-donald-trump-vs-hillary.html