Trump Extends His lead Among Republicans

I think the establishment Republicans would like to see one of the more moderate conservatives get the party's nomination for president -- someone like Romney, Daniels or Pawlenty who could appeal to independent voters. But that's not happening, at least not yet. Daniels has said he's not running, Pawlenty can't seem to get any traction at all, and recently Romney has been dropping in the polls.

The hot candidate right now is multiple-bankruptcy, multiple-marriage businessman Donald Trump. And Trump hasn't even been campaigning on any real issues -- either economic, social, or religious. He is just trying to appeal to the nutty wing of the party by backing the "birther" movement (the ludicrous idea that President Obama wasn't born in the United States).

It started a couple of weeks ago when a poll of New Hampshire voters showed that Trump was the choice of 21% of the state's Republicans -- six points behind Romney and nine points ahead of Huckabee and Gingrich. This was followed by a NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll that showed Trump was tied with Huckabee for second place (at 17%) and only four points behind Romney. Then a CNN/Opinion Research poll came out showing Trump had moved into a first place tie with Huckabee (at 19%) while Romney had dropped to a fourth place tie with Gingrich at 11% (Palin was third at 12%).

Now Public Policy Polling, one of the most respected of the polling organizations, has just released a survey (done between April 7th and April 9th of national Republican primary voters). This survey shows Trump alone in first place by nine points over Huckabee and eleven points over Romney. Here are those numbers:

Donald Trump...............26%
Mike Huckabee...............17%
Mitt Romney...............15%
Newt Gingrich...............11%
Sarah Palin...............8%
Ron Paul...............5%
Michele Bachmann...............4%
Tim Pawlenty...............4%
Someone else...............10%

That's a significant lead for Trump (and more than the 4.9 point margin of error). After all of these polls it can no longer be denied that Trump has vaulted up among the leaders (maybe even the leader) among Republican candidates. Whether he can maintain this lead or not is anybody's guess, but right now it looks like his popularity among Republicans is growing -- not diminishing.

I think this just shows that the nutty teabagger wing of the Republican Party is now where the real power lies in the party, because that is where Trump is getting his support. It is becoming a real possibility that the teabaggers will determine who the Republican candidate is for the general election.

That has to have Democrats smiling all over the country.