Well, the "rationality" of the piece is rather dubious. For example consider your description of the "backfire effect":

For instance, Mitt Romney condemned Trump as a “phony” and “fraud” shortly before the March 15 primaries. This type of attack only strengthens the emotional desire to vote for Trump among anti-establishment voters by triggering a thinking error called the backfire effect — a tendency for our beliefs to grow stronger when they are challenged by contradictory evidence.

Except Romney wasn't presenting evidence, he was making an assertion. And in a lot of circumstances it is perfectly rational to update away from assertions.

More generally, in a lot of cases you describe acting on fear as irrational even though the fear in question is perfectly rational.

Original thread here.