Another poll confirms that Mitch McConnell's favorable rating is now smoldering garbage

That makes four polls released this week, one each day so far, uniformly showing either his job approval or his favorability in ruins. The high number was a 27/44 favorable rating measured by former Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio. The low number was, ah… Yeah.

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Harvard-Harris is out with a new survey placing him at 19 percent favorability. This is what happens, I guess, when you promise ObamaCare repeal for seven years, finally put a bill on the floor that the president will sign, and whiff.

McConnell scores just a 19 percent favorable rating in the national poll, worse than President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Forty-nine percent of voters polled have a negative view of the Senate leader. The rest of those polled didn’t know McConnell, or didn’t know enough to have an opinion…

Only 32 percent of Republican respondents view McConnell favorably, while 40 percent have a negative view of him.

That 19 percent is the lowest favorable rating for any major national politician. A McConnell political advisor noted to the Hill that national polls of state officials are kinda … stupid, really, as McConnell will never face a national electorate and therefore hasn’t bothered wooing one. Trump has, which is why the president tends to get the credit when his party is productive in Congress while Congress tends to take the blame when it isn’t. Plus, unlike an executive, McConnell is stuck having to answer for decisions made by colleagues. He would have gotten “skinny repeal” through the Senate after all if not for McCain’s last-second surprise. You can hate McConnell for not keeping his caucus in line if you like but in the end it’s McCain, Collins, and Murkowski who sank health-care reform, not Mitch. He’s the lightning rod because he’s the leader.

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All of those defenses are fair enough but (a) his numbers back home in Kentucky are momentarily garbage now as well per PPP and (b) there’s more to McConnell’s decline on the right than just the health-care debacle. The growing feud with Trump is also part of it. And I think McConnell, fairly or not, is also bearing the brunt of discontent among some Republican voters that the Russiagate probe continues to drag on. What they want him or Paul Ryan to do to stop it, I don’t know. But the very idea of it — the president in legal jeopardy at a moment when his party controls the entire federal government, including the DOJ — may feed Republican voters’ anger. What good is having a GOP Congress, they may reason, if it can’t protect Trump? McConnell is impotent.

Trump himself is part of this group, of course:

President Donald Trump privately vented his frustration over Russia-related matters with at least two other Republican senators this month, according to people familiar with the conversations — in addition to the president’s public admonishments of Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Jeff Flake…

Trump’s chewing out of GOP senators, according to people briefed on the calls, reflected the president’s frustration that fellow Republicans would make moves that could damage him, particularly on an investigation that he detests. Trump also complained about the Russian sanctions measure in a call with McConnell earlier this month that devolved into shouting. The New York Times first reported that Trump discussed the Russia probe with McConnell.

“It seems he is just always focused on Russia,” one senior GOP aide said.

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Impeachment remains a very long longshot, but try to imagine what would happen to Ryan’s and McConnell’s ratings if they went through with it. Single digits for both, right? They’ll get little credit from Democrats for removing a president whom they enabled in the first place and Republicans will turn on them viciously for having betrayed Trump. Nineteen percent might not be rock bottom for Mitch.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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