Frank Luntz held another focus group. (I simply cannot express how much I regret not getting into this racket.) Observes Time magazine:
[A]ll of them had been selected because they like (or love) Trump….
The focus group watched taped instances on a television of Trump’s apparent misogyny, political flip flops and awe-inspiring braggadocio. They watched the Donald say Rosie O’Donnell has a "fat, ugly face." They saw that Trump once supported a single-payer health system, and they heard him say, "I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created"….
At the end of the session, the vast majority said they liked Trump more than when they walked in.
Of course they did; that's the way most opinions work. You show me a man or woman full of self-certainties and I'll show you a human being who will give no quarter to countervailing evidence. Indeed, when put on the spot, each will dig in deeper.
Yet the kind of adulation shown to the — let's be charitable — "unorthodox" Trump is rarely sustained. To sustain it, the adulated must tirelessly crank up the crazy, and with each crank, he loses a bit of that adulation among a bit of that base. Celebrated case in point: Joe McCarthy's sliding poll numbers well before his humiliating senatorial censure.
You will note, in Time's reporting, that "the vast majority" said they liked Trump even more after viewing his screened misogyny, etc. etc. We are unsurprised. But that means a minority did not — which might represent some aforementioned chipping away.
I just hope the chips, if that they be, turn not into chunks before February, March, April ...