A new historic low, brought to you by the Republican Party.
According to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll, just 6% approve of the way Congress is handling its job. Seventy-two percent disapprove. That puts Congress the historic low of a 6% approval rating. “Only 10 percent of Democrats, 7 percent of Republicans, and 3 percent of independents approve of Congress,” the poll said.
Speaker John Boehner might want to wipe that smirk off of his ObamaCare whinging grimace, because he has a very favorable rating of just 5%, while President Obama has a very favorable approval rating of 22%, which is the highest very favorable rating of any currently serving politician in the poll. (Hillary Clinton scored the highest at 27% very favorable.)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell joins Boehner in that 5%. So only 5% really like these two Republicans – but one things Republicans do well is hate. So, Obama has 47% very unfavorable compared to Boehner’s 40% very unfavorable and McConnell’s 35% very unfavorable.
Obama has an overall 41% favorable to 55% unfavorable, while only 4% said they don’t know. Boehner has overall favorables of 22%, with 60% unfavorables, while 19% don’t know. McConnell scores 19% overall favorables, 54% unfavorables, while 28% don’t know.
The two Republicans are benefiting from higher “don’t knows”, while to put this in perspective, only 14% say they don’t know about Nancy Pelosi and yet she is not the current Speaker of the House. It makes sense that since Republicans go negative most often, they’ve solidified the hate over the “don’t knows”. What they never manage to do is lock up very many “favorables”.
“Opinions of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid don’t seem to be affected by the filibuster vote,” according to the poll. “Unfavorable opinions of him continue to outnumber favorable ones, but he scores modestly better than his GOP counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And Congressional Democrats fare better than Congressional Republicans.”
These bad poll numbers might seem distressing for Congress and Republicans especially, but Republicans don’t mind getting dirty in order to smear the other side. And that’s what is happening here. By obstructing everything and turning this Congress into a historically lazy Congress, Republicans bring down the public’s trust in Congress and bring down the morale of hard core Democrats – the very people who vote in midterms.
This is a deliberate strategy meant to depress the vote as an added bonus to pretending a Democrat wasn’t re-elected to the White House. It works because too much of the public is misinformed about how our government works, and they blame both parties for the “gridlock” narrative, well established by the ever helpful stenographers in the mainstream media.
Republicans only have charge of one chamber in Congress, and that’s the House — where they work less days and get historically less done than any other Congress.
After all of the relentless negativity aimed at Obama’s signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the fact that he has higher very favorables than any other currently serving politician polled is a testament to Obama’s consistently high likability.
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Obama Scores Highest Very Favorables Among Currently Serving Politicians
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