Not satisfied.
According to a new Pew poll, the Republican base
isn't too happy with their leaders.
Today, just 41% of Republicans approve of the job their party’s leaders in Congress are doing. [...] And just 37% of Republicans say their party’s leaders are keeping their campaign promises, while 53% say they are not.
The reason they don't approve, though, is because they think House and Senate Republicans aren't doing
enough to oppose Barack Obama. Yikes.
The survey finds deep differences in how Republicans and Democrats want President Obama and GOP leaders to deal with issues. Fully 75% of Republicans want GOP leaders to challenge Obama more often; just 15% say they are handling relations with the president about right and 7% say GOP leaders should go along with Obama more often.
Three quarters of Republicans want the party to "challenge" the president
more? Short of shuttering government entirely or declaring Texas to be its own country, what would that even look like? Was there something that Republicans agreed with the president on when we weren't looking? Is this a Jade Helm thing?
Greg Sargent:
That doesn’t bode particularly well for what’s ahead. It could complicate things if the Supreme Court guts subsidies for millions, and Republican leaders decide that a contingency fix is a “must-pass” to punt political fallout until after 2016. It could make Republicans dig in even harder against Obama-negotiated Iran and global climate deals. It could complicate the push to replenish the Highway Trust Fund, which Obama will demand on the grounds that failure will kill jobs and infrastructure projects around the country.
Along with everything else. If there's any silver lining to this, it's that the Republican base will be pushing the party
even farther to the right in the run-up to these next elections. That might be good news for the base, but very bad news for a party that needs to attract (or at least not terrify) more independent-minded voters if they hope to avoid a 2016 shellacking.