WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — “To grassroots conservatives outside the big metropolitan centers, one of Trump's big attractions has been to speak truth to the god of liberal political correctness,” history professor Matthew Dal Santo of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said.
In the United States, conservatives, especially those who live in rural areas, see the brand of multicultural liberalism represented by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as a threat to traditional Christian beliefs and American patriotism, Dal Santo asserted.
“Trump, being the product of America's biggest and most liberal city, New York, has always been something of an unlikely candidate to represent their grievances,” he said. “But for all his deep flaws, Trump has done the country a service in making them part of the national debate again.”
However, the Manhattan real estate mogul’s remarks about groping women are damaging his White House candidacy, the professor stated.
They reveal that although Trump has presented himself as a spokesman for certain conservatives, he lives outside their moral universe, according to Dal Santo.
Trump “permits himself a kind of licentiousness that many conservatives would see as the product of the very moral relativism they reject, one they associate in their minds with the country's post-Christian, cosmopolitan liberal elite,” he explained.
“Trump's chances of winning the White House may depend on how they resolve this moral conundrum,” he said.
Beau Grosscup, professor emeritus of political science at California State University, Chico, expressed confidence that Trump will retain his core support and that enthusiasm among some conservatives may actually increase in the weeks before the November 8 election.
“Trump, no matter what he says or does, has a core of support, principally among white, working-class patriarchal men who feel aggrieved that they have had to give way to the politics of equality/racial/biological fairness,” Grosscup said.
These supporters regard Trump as their “last chance to restore their privileged position in society,” he stated.
They “have rejected the ‘coded’ language of racism/misogamy/class oppression that has been the agenda of Republican Party elites for decades, preferring the nominee’s ‘straight talk,’” Grosscup asserted.
He said the rift between Trump supporters and establishment Republicans could open a path for Democrats to gain seats in Congress next month, but that will largely be determined by which party’s voters actually show up to polls on Election Day.
