Rise of Trump?

I've read a lot of commentary as to why Donald Trump is doing so well, and among so many different groups (he polls strongly across all groups save party establishment loyalists). One such article--I lost track of it, so no link right now--was sent to me a few months before the primaries in a conversation with a good friend of mine from South Carolina, who explained that he planned to vote for Trump.

Here is another one from John Hayward of Breitbart.com:

Trump’s voters have lost faith in the Republican Party, the media, the federal government, long-standing assumptions about the economy… and, most unfortunately, many of their fellow citizens.

That loss of faith has been building for a long time, across an entire generation and several presidencies. Its echoes can be heard among some Democrat constituencies as well, although they tend to blame different elements of the old order for breaking faith with the people.

On the Republican side, the loss of faith in the GOP Establishment is palpable, building into an avalanche of distrust over the past three elections....

The immigration issue resonates because it’s such an obvious example of the Establishment holding a radically different position than voters… and relentlessly trying to shove it down their throats, year after year, no matter how much they protest. It’s like the customer in the Monty Python skit trying to order a meal without spam, from a restaurant that insists on cramming spam into every single menu item. No matter how loudly they object, Republican voters can’t get their party leadership to take immigration seriously.

The central premise of open-borders ideology is that people who are not American citizens have needs the U.S. government must prioritize above the needs of Americans. Big Republican donors want cheap labor at the expense of American workers. On both sides of the aisle, our elite lost faith in us, long before we lost faith in them...

Saddest of all, the American people have lost a crucial degree of faith in each other. That’s not surprising, because they’ve been blasted with messages – and billion-dollar programs – for the past seven years, based on the idea that only the biggest Big Government in history can protect us from each other. Middle Americans see armies of Social Justice Warriors lined up against them. People who have been told they have no moral right to organize politically understand how that leaves them defenseless against a rapacious political culture. Nominally conservative big-money interests turned out to be very willing to cut deals with Big Government.

The value of persuasion has been reduced, because socialism is compulsive – it’s not a debate, it’s Thunderdome. The losers are punished and looted. No one gets to sit on the sidelines.

Can we persuade the Left to rediscover the value of free speech… or must we send Trump to show them how it feels to be on the wrong side of their tactics? Can we persuade the Left to remember the importance of limited government and the separation of powers… or must we replace their beloved “benevolent dictator” with Trump, to frighten them back into constitutional government?

This is a fairly good summary of the reasons I have seen given. Personally, I take these collectively as reasons to be wary of Marco Rubio (the establishment's current choice after Jeb Bush fizzled out). If you dislike the establishment, vote for Ted Cruz. The man at least has a touch of decorum and class, even if he does at times come across as a used car salesman or evangelical preacher.