For Trump, and for his core adherents, the more isolated he is from what they call political correctness, from the mass of elite as well as broad public opinion, and from the broader cultural trend toward inclusion, the better he’s doing. This is the view expressed by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway when she complains that “everyone is gunning for us.” [...]
The specific argument, though, is that Trump’s unpopularity won’t really matter until it matters to a large number of elected Republicans in the House and Senate, and until it matters enough for them to consider impeaching Trump or defying him on key proposals and nominations. Even a deeply unpopular Trump will still be popular with Republican voters; the CBS poll that found Trump’s approval at 32 percent on Wednesday also found that Republicans gave him a 68 percent approval rating — very low by historic standards but enough to keep most Republican senators and members of Congress in line. [...]
Another problem for would-be Trumpian primary challengers: It may be difficult to define what the challenge would be about, in any coherent way, other than personal loyalty to Trump. Especially in the Republican primaries, but again in his inaugural speech, Trump presented himself not as a right-wing ideologue but as a sort of super-competent technocrat, defining a few big problems (“We’re always losing”) and pledging to fix them (“I alone…”).
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