If Republicans in North Carolina needed more bad news, it comes this morning following a focus group in Wilmington. Twelve people who voted for Trump were asked their opinions of him and other matters of concern. Almost all of the participants said negative things about the president and indicated that he’s made matters worse, not better.
When asked to describe the president, members of the group “called him incompetent, a baffling fool, childlike, a loose cannon, an immature narcissist and ignorant.” And these are his supporters. In a year like 2018, when there’s no statewide election on the ballot, the president is the de facto top of the Republican ticket. The GOP needs to figure out how to distance themselves from the president before the election next year.
To put the electorate in perspective, their top priorities are the economy and healthcare. While they give Trump relatively high marks for the economy, they’re worried about healthcare at a time when the GOP is going to vote to end the individual mandate, stripping away insurance from 13 million people and raising premiums on millions more. In Virginia, healthcare was the leading issue in the elections earlier this month. That alone should be a warning sign for the GOP.
Nobody mentioned Russia or the Mueller investigation. That could change if more revelations emerge but it also might be a distraction that Democrats need to avoid. Elections are about things that affect people’s day-to-day lives, not the obsession of political junkies and social media.
One opening for Republicans could be to run against Mitch McConnell. All twelve people used negative phrases to describe Mitch McConnell. It’s hard to be a member of the party in power and to run against it, but there might not be any other option if the president and Congressional leadership are held in low esteem by voter who previously supported them.
The focus group shows the problems Republicans face heading into the midterms. Healthcare is a leading issue and Republicans can’t figure out how to improve it. The people who elected the president no longer support him. The GOP leadership in Congress is not respected by the voters Republicans need to win next year. On the bright side, they’ve got a year to figure out how address these concerns. It’s still not looking good.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I am still waiting for the wonderful health plan Trump said he had during the election.
Republicans for the past nine years have opposed that black guy that happened to defeat them for the presidency. With a majority in both house of Congress for most of that time, their two main goals have been to repeal the Affordable Care Act and enact a tax cut for the wealthy at the expense of the poor and dwindling middle class. While too many of us have been following the Russia investigation, House Republicans passed a tax cut for the super-wealthy, devastating Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and stripping 13 million Americans of health insurance. How a major party could do such evil to their fellow Americans is one of the issues of the hour. We need to push back and direct our energy to the U.S. Senate, where the tax cut, not tax reform, tax cut, now become a major issue.
Thomas: Please tell us a little more about this focus group in Wilmington: e.g., sample selection, sponsor, company who did it, were they going to change their votes, state issues and candidates and the like. Not many focus groups seem to be done in North Carolina or, if so,
do not release their results.
I can add a bit about the focus group. It was assembled by pollster Peter Hart. Brian Williams on his msnbc show “The 11th Hour” last night showcased it. As I recall, Williams said there were seven Democrats and five Republicans in the focus group. I believe they all voted for Trump. All are disillusioned, and rightly so. They made the electoral mistake of a lifetime.
My family of 4 spent $20,000 out of pocket last year. My spouse’s insurance was payed for by the state, about $500 a month. I do not think the average family of 4 spent $26,000 last year on insurance. So how did Obama care help my family? The D’s had 7 years to correct it and they did nothing. So who is clueless, I think they all are. In the end we as tax payers get screwed.
Not really. The Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.
The Senate required a Super-majority for bills to pass. So a party needed 60 votes to pass major bills. Democrats had a super-majority for a couple of months after a long recount that resulted in Al Franken taking his seat, long after the 2009 term began. The super-majority was lost when Sen. Ted Kennedy died a few months later.
Republicans hated affordable care from the beginning, and they tried to repeal it as soon as they got a majority in the House and have continued to try to repeal it ever since.
They have blocked every effort to improve affordable care along with other measures to improve the economy or assist working families. If you voted for the party that wants to kill your medical insurance plan and they kill your medical insurance plan, you have apparently gotten what you wanted.
FANCY BEAR
It’s incredible that Republican voters did not notice that they sent representatives to Washington to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Congress didn’t take a couple of shots at it. By March 2014, Republicans had attempted to repeal Obamacare 54 times, but they weren’t finished. Trump campaigned for the repeal of Affordable Care as did every Republican running for office in 2016.
The Republicans have tried repeatedly this year to repeal Affordable Care, and have included a provision to gut affordable care in the current tax bill.
How can any Republican not know that affordable care is the primary target of their party in Washingon? It is the only thing they have done in 2017 – attempt to get rid of affordable care.
Getting rid of Obama’s signature achievement has been a unifying issue for 8 years for the Republicans in the United States.
Are Republicans unaware that we fought Nazis and fascism until 1945? Are they aware the child molesters are repugnant to American values?
Americans have televisions, radios, newspapers, magazines, internet connections, and wireless communications connecting our phones to everything information source. We have libraries in every community. It is not possible to be so clueless without some effort to willingly keep facts at bay.
As The Liberal Redneck Trae Crowder observed, “A conservative is someone who would burn his own house down, if it meant the liberal next door would choke on the smoke for 15 seconds.”
It’s worth mentioning that every single elected Republican in NC endorsed Trump in 2016, and very nearly every one of them still vote with him on virtually every issue and nomination. The lone exception MIGHT be Walter Jones in NC 03, who seemed disturbed by the debt repercussions of the tax bill. But I don’t know how he ultimately voted, just that he circulated a survey to his mailing list asking if they agreed with the idea of adding $1.5T to the debt.
And when it comes time to vote, the GOP base will vote for the “R”, for as long as the “R” means guns and babbies and building that wall. FSM help the “R” if they ever figure out that their “conservative heroes” tell their voters what they want to hear so that they can do the bidding of their wealthy patrons. The typical elected R wouldn’t know a principle if it bit him (or her, let’s not leave out Virginia Fox here) on the butt unless it padded his pocket in the process.