Writing for The Atlantic, Molly Ball does a profile of the political impact of Kellyanne Conway, calling her "the unsung architect of Trumpism." That would make Conway, along with Steve Bannon, the Trump administration's Karl Rove. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.
Conway was a pollster before she became a campaign manager. Three years ago she produced polling data supporting RealClearPolitics analyst Sean Trende's notion that many thousands of white working class rural voters of the Northern Midwest didn't vote in 2012.
Like Trende, she believed these non-voters saw nothing to choose between Romney and Obama - disliking both equally - and stayed home. The issue was then how to lure these voters back to the polls. That Conway's roots were among such voters didn't hurt.
Conway's numbers supporting Trende's analysis convinced eminence grise Steve Bannon a winning strategy lay in advocating a crackdown on illegal immigration, and perhaps a slowdown in legal immigration as well. The rest, as they say, is history. Ball's article is worth reading.
