Posted on 08/04/2018 3:41:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
HILLSBORO, Ohio — After President Trump’s less-than-stellar performance side by side with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, many Trump critics may have hoped, reasonably, that Trump’s approval ratings — already historically low compared with other presidents — would take a nose-dive.
Instead, his numbers remained basically steady. A July NBC/Wall Street Journal sampling even found that Trump’s approval rating climbed one point from the previous month, to 45 percent, and, most notably, his 88 percent approval among Republicans is the highest of his presidency.
Republican pollster Bill McInturff, part of the team that conducted the poll, said the stability in the president’s numbers was noteworthy, considering not only the widely panned summit with Putin but also other controversies, including the separation of families at the border and Trump’s rocky NATO meetings.
Trump’s haters — it is not too strong a word — accuse the GOP base of abandoning its principles or being mindlessly enslaved to the “cult of Trump.” It is time to consider that almost everyone has been misreading the Republican Party’s core for several years.
In 2008 and 2012, the eventual GOP nominee was, in both cases, a compromise candidate. Republicans were not particularly enthusiastic about either John McCain or Mitt Romney, each of whom amassed about 10 million votes in their respective primaries. By contrast, Trump racked up about 14 million primary votes in 2016.
While McCain, a senator from Arizona, is esteemed for his military service and his courage as a POW — Trump’s own ill-conceived comments in 2015 notwithstanding — neither he nor Romney is viewed as a stalwart defender of the GOP; both are willing to criticize their own party at the drop of a hat, like a father constantly ashamed of his own children.
Trump, by comparison, won’t apologize or back down. The base loves him for it.
When I was growing up, my uncle, Bill Kibler, was a figure who both intimidated and fascinated me. A big, loud Navy veteran, farmer, outdoorsman and county Republican Party chairman, Uncle Bill was never shy with an opinion, often stated in the most politically incorrect manner. His verbal daggers frequently targeted his own party.
“They don’t have any guts,” he would say every time Republicans either folded, in his opinion, or acquiesced to the Democrats or the media on one issue or another. “The Democrats never back down or apologize. They play hardball. We’re sissies,” he would say, except sissies was not the word he used.
Uncle Bill passed away in 2008 at age 84, and it is a cosmic injustice that he did not live to see Donald Trump become president.
He would be gratified that, finally, there has arrived a Republican who won’t apologize, come hell or high water, for wanting to enforce immigration laws, for demanding that our allies pony up more for our common defense and — most impressively, as far as the base is concerned — for giving as good as he gets from the media.
It will pain #NeverTrump Republicans to admit it, but the party for which they pine has, for many years, been little more than a figment of their imaginations. The GOP base is not composed of people wringing their hands over Trump’s peccadilloes or embracing the left’s laundry list of grievances.
No, the GOP base is Uncle Bill. It is a coalition of die-hard partisans who have long resented Republicans, past and present, who surrender to Democrats or cater to the liberal media’s definition of appropriateness.
I recently argued that the GOP has become the party of Trump. But it may be more accurate that the party of Trump has existed for years and has just been waiting for Trump to arrive.
The base won’t abandon him — not over Russia, not over family separations, not over Stormy Daniels and company, and certainly not over his attacks on the media.
In 1992, Hillary Clinton famously protested that she wasn’t just some Tammy Wynette-style wife blindly standing by her man despite her husband’s philandering ways. She added, “I’m sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together.”
Likewise, however badly Trump behaves, and regardless of the criticism he faces, grass-roots Republicans are standing by him and going through it with him, defiantly and without apology. They finally have the president they’ve been waiting for, and they’re not letting him go.
The President is us.
Rasmussen has him at 50%, others have him around 45%
WTF is that low? It is better than Obama's with 100% of the slobbering media while TRUMP gets 90% of the news media reporting bad news on him!!!
No, you’re wrong; its not that the Party hierarchy has misunderstood its base, but that they have actively despised the base.
The reason for this was simple. If you did not do this, you were destroyed by the Media. (there were a few execeptions that were ineffectual).
President Trump has shown that alternate media has developed to the point elected representatives do not have to cower in fear of the Media.
It is a revolution in power in the United States. That is why the Media is going bat-sh*t crazy.
They expect to pick the politicians that succeed, pick those they destroy with scandals, control the narratives, choose the issues of the day.
They no longer can do those things with any reliability.
“Why is this drivel posted here?”
Hey lucky, are you sure you’re on the right forum?
At this point in his term President Trump's approval ratings are higher than other recent presidents and this is based on polls that are typically biased against him by various means.
Outside of one or two points at the start, it’s a pretty good article actually, especially coming from the MSM.
Why is this drivel posted here? We know how much the other side hates us.
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If you had read the piece you wouldn’t have said that.
The only issue that could drive a wedge between Trump and his base is the wall. If he fails to build the wall, people will start to walk away from him.
Obviously written by an 11 year old school child. But, why post it here. It belongs on CNN, MSNBC or WaPo.
When did you change? The Democratic party shifted by ‘72 with the selection of McGovern. Portions of it were exposing there in 64 and 68.
Outstanding post!!!
Keep it up!
The truth is that the Republican party elite have failed utterly and still don't get it. So, for that matter, have the Democrat party elite, and neither do they. This is the all-conquering Uniparty, scared to death and wondering what's going to hit them next. They had it all, you see. And that light at the end of their tunnel really did turn out to be an oncoming train.
Obama’s was pretty much stuck at around 45% approval, with his disapproval higher than his approval. Going by Rasmussen (albeit a different polling organization), Trump is doing a little bit better than Obama at this stage of his presidency, even with Obama getting 90% favorable coverage by the media and Trump getting 90 unfavorable coverage by the media.
That's when I started to drift away, later I was a Reagan democrat and gave up totally when Judge Bork got lynched.--Tom
I like it, good post.
ff
The Jackson supporters loved him so much that, at the advent of the Civil War, they remembered that Jackson threatened to hang his own VP if South Carolina seceded, and that the Union should not be divided. Over 100,000 of them and their sons joined the Union Army even though they were from the South.
Nobody likes Trump except the voters.
Hell's bells I liked the title and I liked the article. It was direct, had a good anecdote, and it's the truth.
PS: 2DV sorry for being such a dick to you in early 2016. Your skillz as a news aggregator are genuinely and ongoingly appreciated.
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