Trump's Supporters: Extreme Fools

I saw two good pieces today about Trump's support.  The first, by Digby, summarizes what really horrible policies and personal qualities Trump has that his supporters either admire or overlook:

What this means is that a majority of Republicans apparently either like or don't care that he thinks Mexicans are rapists and criminals. They are fine with someone as president who wants to torture terrorist suspects and kill their innocent children. They have no problem with someone who wants to use summary execution against accused deserters. It's not a deal breaker to vote for someone who has a long history of sexism and misogyny to lead the country. They don't find it completely unacceptable that he has no respect for prisoners of war, saying he "prefers" people who don't let the enemy catch them. They are apparently not alarmed by the fact that he promises to change the libel laws so the press cannot freely write about him. They cheer when he eggs on violence at his rallies and don't think his offering to pay the legal fees of someone who hit a protesters is a problem. They see nothing wrong in his pledge to kill oil truck drivers and seize oil wells in foreign countries. Sending Syrian refugees that have been properly vetted and are living in the country back to a war zone to be killed is fine with them. Reviving the 1950s plan called "Operation Wetback" to round up and deport millions of people doesn't bother them either. Building a huge wall along our southern border sounds like a reasonable plan to them. These, and more, are all "politically incorrect" ideas that many GOP voters are happy to endorse. 

They also apparently have no objections to voting for a man who lies as easily as he breathes and has demonstrated over and over again that he is completely unprepared for the job of president, has no idea what it entails entails and has the knowledge of world affairs and domestic policy of an average 16 year old boy, along with the adolescent temperament.

Wow!  Donald Trump must have something really good going for him if people are willing to overlook all of that horrible stuff!  What could he possibly be doing right?

Well, at the risk of setting up a straw man, I believe a sizable number of Trump supporters like him because he's "authentic" and not your typical politician.  I'll give them the "not typical" part, but as far as his authenticity goes, Timothy Hill at FiveThirtyEight has data demonstrating that this view by Trump's supporters "gets reality almost exactly backward":

The Trump campaign is tapping into a widespread belief Americans have about politicians: They lie. A Rasmussen survey in 2014 found that just 4 percent of likely voters that year believed that “most politicians” kept the promises they made on the campaign trail, while 83 percent did not. (The remaining 13 percent were undecided.) Similarly, when The New York Times asked respondents in 2009 if President Obama would be able to keep his promise not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year, 56 percent said no.1 More broadly, the General Social Survey in 2012 asked people whether they agreed that candidates elected to Congress try to keep the promises they made during the election — a majority (59 percent) disagreed.

It turns out, however, that in this case, the majority is wrong.

Not exactly the sharpest bunch, those Trump supporters.