Welcome to the new state of American politics:
An NBC/WSJ poll released Thursday reveals that more Republican voters consider themselves a “supporter of Donald Trump” rather than a “supporter of the Republican Party.”
A whopping 58 percent of respondents indicated they considered themselves Trump supporters, while only 38 percent indicated they considered themselves supporters of the Republican party. 2 percent see themselves as both, while 1 percent said they were neither.
After watching the Republican “majority” being held hostage by the thoroughly loathsome John McCain for the last two months, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Despite the Republican domination at the federal and state level, the party is a bit adrift. It is nigh impossible to quickly state what the GOP stands for anymore.
Are they the small-government party? No, they simply favor a slightly less bloated federal bureaucracy than do the Democrats.
Are they the party of lower taxes? As I mentioned in this video earlier, they are the party that likes to talk about lower taxes. A lot.
If pressed, most Republicans would probably just say that the Republicans are “not the Democrats” when trying to describe their own party. The Democrats are even more adrift after Barack Obama left the party’s cupboard bare, so that is enough for a lot of people.
The people voting Republican all over America these last few years have very little in common with the Republicans in Washington and the latter group is almost completely unaware of that. They better get a grip on that soon.
The party has driven away a lot of small-government conservatives like me in recent years, especially those of us who were heavily involved in the Tea Party movement. We practically handed them two huge midterm victories, only to have the Beltway establishment Republicans do nothing but complain about conservatives.
Again, the fact that Democrats are so lost these days means that the only voices being heard from them are coming from the progressive fringe. Until McCain handed the other party two victories, the Democrats’ flailing had allowed Washington Republicans into deluding themselves.
Self-delusion is common in Washington, but it is reaching epidemic levels among Republicans lately. They better figure out how to do something with all of this power soon while there are still people outside of the Beltway who are willing to call themselves Republicans.
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