Confessore: Trump is Santorum ‘with Tens of Millions of Dollars in Free Media and 5 Million Twitter Followers’

TODD: “...distraction to the party because it’s missing the economic.”
BRZEZINSKI: “It’s gone — the whole conversation by conservatism.” 
SCARBOROUGH: “It is — it is — the definition of conservatism that Marco Rubio preaches is conservatism as defined by the donor class, as defined by the wealthiest Republicans. It is not the conservatism of the rank and file that are coming out to Trump’s rallies. [crosstalk] And people who act like Donald Trump has like invented something new is out of — it shows their complete ignorance. These people have been around. You know, all of the Ross Perot people of ‘92 they all voted for people like me in ‘94. Pat Buchanan in ‘96 had more impact on the future of the Republican Party than Bob Dole or anybody else. And that strain of populism stayed within the Republican party for 20 years. And yet, you kept getting people like George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney — it was only a matter of time until the populists found a candidate they could rally around that didn’t need donor class money. And that’s the key, Nick Confessore. They didn’t need donor class money. They could speak out against the trade deals that the donor class insisted on. They could speak out against, you know, the slashing tax cuts for the rich, and they didn’t pay a political price. So they could go out and say, hey, what would it be like if we could deliver a populist message and not get punished by the donor class on Wall Street. Donald Trump tried it — voila he’s doing well because of it.”
CONFESSORE: “That’s right. I mean, look, he is Rick Santorum with tens of millions of dollars in free media and, you know, 5 million Twitter followers and the ability to kind of catalyze all of this on the campaign trail in a way that Mike Huckabee and Santorum could not in past campaigns. But it’s a lot of the same message.”