I’ve written before about how erratic Republican attitudes toward House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are. But at least Ryan got a nice boost from his party’s supporters after ramming the tax bill through. Unfortunately for him, as we can see with our always-up-to-date Civiqs data, that glow has faded.
The erratic lines in this chart stand in stark contrast with Donald Trump’s. Fact is, Republicans just don’t like Ryan. So what accounts for that late September rise, and early February collapse? One of the limitations of our real-time public opinion tool is causation is much more difficult. It’s made harder because Republican public opinion can be manipulated by conservative media outlets outside the mainstream, and outside reality. So for all we know, Hannity or Limbaugh are to blame.
But here’s what we know. In September of last year, Congress raised the debt limit and averted a government shutdown. While much of the narrative was that those were wins for Democrats, maybe Republicans thought otherwise. Or maybe they were genuinely happy that a government shutdown was averted.
And that collapse in the early days of February? On February 2, the Nunes Memo was released to near-universal disdain. On February 3, Ryan tweeted about that woman who was saving a whole ONE DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS per week, thanks to the tax bill—a tweet so universally reviled that Ryan had to delete it.
Again, correlation is not causation. Did those events move numbers, or are they merely coincidences. What do you guys think? Any other theories?
p.s. Just for context, among Democrats, Nancy Pelosi has a 57-16 rating.