Markos Moulitsas: Where Trump is weak

With the countdown to the presidential primary elections winding down, Donald Trump’s dominant position to be named the GOP nominee for 2016 looks more and more unassailable. He is now at 39 percent in the Huffington Post polling aggregate — 20 points higher than second-place contender Ted Cruz — and he has weathered every assault launched by his opponents, both in the primary field and in the Republican establishment. 

It doesn’t hurt that those attacks have been nothing but incompetent. 

{mosads}The first salvo came after Trump’s disparaging remarks about Arizona Sen. John McCain’s war record and time as a POW. The media mogul undoubtedly crossed a line, but rival Republicans underestimated conservative animosity toward the GOP senator and overestimated the notion that there is any “line” in speaking to today’s rabid party base. Indeed, Republicans have railed against supposed liberal political correctness for generations — did they really think that suddenly demanding some decorum and common decency when discussing others would strike a chord? 

Similarly, Republicans wonder why they can’t gain traction with attacks on Trump’s bizarre and xenophobic desire to block all Muslims — even those who are Americans — from the United States. This is a party that has spent the last two decades spewing apocalyptic, war-of-civilizations rhetoric against Muslims. Why would any Republican expect their base to suddenly develop nuance and temperance when discussing the topic? 

There was an attempt to tar Trump for his new love affair with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin as well — not for Russia’s adventures in Syria or Ukraine but for the killing of scores of journalist critics. His supporters merely shrugged. Those journalists were probably liberal anyway. 

And we’ve seen sporadic attacks on the billionaire businessman’s personality, such as when rival Jeb Bush called him “unhinged.” Yet Trump is perfectly reflecting modern conservative ideology. Republicans built and primed their base for hate and bigotry, and the GOP finally has a standard-bearer that has ditched dog-whistle politics in favor of overt rhetoric. 

This haphazard, scattershot effort at taking down the Republican front-runner is particularly bizarre given the GOP’s historic messaging strengths: the party almost always acts in laser-focused fashion, incessantly on message, and it always attacks its targets’ greatest strengths. There’s a reason Republicans disgracefully attacked John Kerry’s war service in 2004 or, for that matter, that of former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.). It’s a smart play: negate your opponent’s biggest selling point, and what’s left over is nothing more than mop-up. 

So why won’t Republicans zero in on Donald Trump’s woeful business record? 

The real estate tycoon claims his net worth is $8.7 billion, although an analysis by Bloomberg of his financial disclosures pegged the number at around $2.9 billion. (They didn’t care much for Trump’s claim that his name was worth $3.3 billion.) But even assuming his inflated self-worth, he would’ve done much better by doing nothing. 

According to an analysis in the National Journal, had he invested his share of his father’s real estate company into a boring index fund (and taken nothing out) in 1974, his value today would be $3.4 billion. Take the $200 million he was worth in 1982 and stick it into that same boring fund, he’d be worth $13 billion today. 

In other words, all his business decisions since then — his underperforming golf courses and Manhattan real estate, bankrupt casinos, premium vodka, Trump Tea, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump ties and apparel, Trump cologne, Trump chandeliers, Trump sofas, etc, etc. — have underperformed the wealth that would’ve been created by a non-managed index fund. 

Kudos to him for not losing his inherited fortune, but he’s no Andrew Carnegie. Turns out he’s more like P.T. Barnum.

Moulitsas is the founder and publisher of Daily Kos.