Trump Makes Play for South in Alabama

ALABAMA - Republican front-runner Donald Trump kicked off his southern strategy Friday night in Mobile, Alabama, with a massive campaign event that drew anywhere from twenty to thirty thousand supporters, depending on crowd estimates. 

Photo by Dave Weigel of the Washington Post.

Welcomed by U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, who assisted Trump in crafting his immigration policies in a paper released early this week, the billionaire entertainer turned political mastermind enjoyed fairly enthusiastic support as he delivered conservative and populist platitudes to the adoring crowd.

As the Washington Post reported following the event:

It was the most audacious Donald Trump spectacle yet in a summer full of them, as the Republican presidential front-runner, in his Boeing 757, thundered over a football stadium here Friday night and gave a raucous speech to one of the largest crowds of the 2016 campaign.  

But Trump’s flashy performance was about more than showmanship. His visit to Alabama was coolly strategic, touching down in the heart of red America and an increasingly important early battleground in the Republican nominating contest.

The Manhattan developer, who strode on stage to “Sweet Home Alabama,” is trying to show that his candidacy has broad and lasting appeal across every region of the country — especially here in the South, where Alabama and seven other states are holding a clustered voting blitz March 1.

The scene Friday night put an exclamation point on an extraordinary run in which the flamboyant mogul has thoroughly disrupted the presidential campaign and kindled a national discussion about not just politics but American culture itself.

Trump, however, is far from being the only candidate to target the South. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have all made trips recently to the heavily Republican region in hopes of wooing its voters in next spring's primaries.