Occam And Trump

Donald Trump recently boasted that "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?" At the last GOP debate he did something arguably as bad - he propagated the blood libel that George W. Bush knew that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs but sent Americans to their death in Iraq anyway. Of course, this hasn't caused much of a dent in Trump's popularity. He's maintained his lead of roughly 20 points in South Carolina primary polls.

There have been several serious attempts to explain the Trump phenomenon and below are links to two excellent examples. But I believe the best explanation is the one stated by that sleazy, slimy architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber. People are stupid.

Walter Russell Mead - http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/01/17/andrew-jackson-revenant/

Charles Murray - http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-america-1455290458

Also, Kevin Williamson, detailing Trump's bankruptcies, blows up the braggart's claims of his superior business acumen.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431420/donald-trumps-2016-debate-lies-he-went-bankrupt

On the topic of Saddam Hussein - (Op-ed in the NY Times!!) Middle East expert Kyle Orton repudiates the myth that the removal of the Iraqi dictator led to the rise of ISIS. On the contrary, Orton argues, the terror group had its origins beginning in the mid 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war when Hussein embraced Sunni Islamism. The U.S. invasion of Iraq under Bush did not create ISIS. It eliminated its creator.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/how-saddam-hussein-gave-us-isis.html?_r=0