As Donald Trump’s faux pas stack up and the national anti-GOP news media try to blow each incident into a campaign-ending event, Trump’s popularity seems to grow.  This frustrates both those Republican presidential candidates who want to gain in popularity and the media who want to knock him down the way they knocked down Herman Cain and Mitt Romney.

What observers and analysts may be seeing is something they have never seen before with a Republican candidate: a Teflon® coating to media attacks.  The Teflon man label was first applied to Bill Clinton, who outlasted a seemingly endless series of career-ending faux pas.  Clinton had a different set of issues: a predatory sexual appetite and financial corruption.  Trump’s issues deal with what many see as overly aggressive positions on such things as illegal immigration and foreign policy.

Clinton was aggressive toward women; Trump is a bully toward anyone who criticizes him or calls him out on his comments.  Clinton was a smooth talker who got away with historic abuse of young women while in office.  Trump gets away with violating political correctness and is more policy-oriented, giving solutions that seem extreme. 

Liberal commentators have always demanded that Republicans have moral standards while they avoid moral criticism of their own, such as Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.  This means the Trump phenomenon may be something new.  It seems that while Republicans were never able to overcome the media’s double standard, with Trump, that has changed. 

Donald Trump may be the first Republican Teflon Man.  He may enjoy the immunity from criticism for his extreme characterizations of his opponents and issues that was previously enjoyed only by Democrats in politics.  This is good news for Republicans and may signal a sea change in politics, since liberal commentators can no longer overwhelm the media with accusations of insensitivity and win the day.

This is accompanied by an identical rejection of Hillary Clinton’s attempts to teflonize herself from criticism of her email issue.  No longer can Hillary play, as Bill did, Obi-wan Kenobi to a gullible electorate.  She is not getting away with waving her hand and saying, “These are not the emails you’re looking for,” “I can go about my campaign,” and, to the conservative media, “You can go about your business.”