The extreme positions Trump proposes — and Republicans embrace

And it’s merely the latest example of Trump proposing rather extreme ideas that are then quickly embraced by much of the GOP base.

A Quinnipiac University poll this week showed 66% of Republicans said they supported bombing power plants and other civilian infrastructure in Iran if negotiations do not succeed. (The survey question did not mention that this would likely be a war crime.)

And it was pretty much only Republicans; Democrats opposed the idea 95%-3%, and independents also opposed it overwhelmingly, 77-18%.

The numbers were virtually the same across the board when it came to Trump’s social media threat to end Iranian civilization, which 62% of Republicans labeled “acceptable” but others overwhelmingly said was not.

(It’s worth emphasizing that the poll question was about making the threat, not following through on it.)

A CBS News-YouGov poll over the weekend showed something similar.

After displaying the social-media post in full, twice as many Republicans said they liked it (nearly half) as said they disliked it (about 2 in 10). Another 31% were neutral.

If this feels familiar, there’s a reason for that. Over and over again for a decade, Trump has floated ideas that almost seemed intended to test his base’s loyalty — to see just how far they would go to stand by him.

They’ve repeatedly shown they’ll go plenty far, even on ideas widely rejected by independents.

When Trump said in 2023 that he wanted to be a dictator, but only for a day, he later said it was just a joke. But Republicans still signed off on the idea; a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll showed 74% of them said it would be a “good thing.”