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Why President Trump's abysmal popularity rating won't hurt him
The Week ^ | March 22, 2017 | Scott Galupo

Posted on 03/22/2017 10:15:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

If you perked up at news this week that President Trump's approval rating had dipped to 37 percent, according to figures tracked by Gallup, you should un-perk.

The truth is, whether Trump is in the 30s or 40s — or even 20s or 50s — simply doesn't matter much. For those of us between the ages of 25 and 100 years old, this is going to take some getting used to.

We are accustomed to believing that a president needs to be popular to see his agenda become law. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush used their political capital, the democratic legitimacy that is uniquely their own in presidential systems like ours, to marshal public support for, say, the League of Nations or the Iraq War. "We must remember that it is the president who sets the agenda for our government," former Speaker John Boehner said on Election Night 2010, when Republicans won control of the House in a historic shellacking of President Obama.

President Trump no doubt sees himself in this vein, too. That's one of the reasons he enjoys public rallies in red states so much: Trump desperately wants to be a popular president in the traditional sense. But that is clearly not how our government is behaving right now. It is behaving more like a parliamentary democracy.

Indulge, if you a will, a brief detour into political science. During the implacable partisan gridlock of the Obama years, center-left writers like Matthew Yglesias revived an argument made by the late Juan J. Linz that presidential systems are uniquely given to constitutional crises. Unlike in parliamentary democracies, where prime ministers derive their authority from the legislature, a president of an opposing party may legitimately claim to represent the people as much as lawmakers themselves. The result? Destabilizing gridlock.

New York's Jonathan Chait, meanwhile, argued that America had historically handled such competing claims of legitimacy just fine — until, that is, one of our two major parties was captured by a splinter group defined by an unusually virulent (from the point of view of other advanced democracies) strain of antigovernment ideology.

Without attempting to settle this question, let me introduce a new one: What if our system is mutating into a new hybrid of presidentialism and parliamentarism? Consider, in this light, Trump's meager approval rating not as a standalone public measure of his performance, but rather as a chunk of rock-solid support that he brings to the Republican Party. All of a sudden, it's not that his approval rating is only 37 percent — it's that tens of millions of Americans — a full 37 percent of the country! — are lining up behind him.

To understand why this is more than statistical sleight of hand, let's dispense for a moment with the idea that there is a singular entity called the "Republican Party."

As my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty writes, today's GOP is better seen as a union of various factions: tax-cutting fanatics like Paul Ryan, internationalist hawks like John McCain, "constitutional conservatives" like Rand Paul, and populist-nationalists like Stephen Bannon. These various strands of rightism last year reached an uneasy modus vivendi: We will deliver X-number of white working-class Democrats; in return you will downplay your commitment to free trade and cheap labor. You can have your tax cuts for the wealthy and possibly a Supreme Court majority to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In parliamentary lingo, when representatives from various parties strike such a bargain, it's called forming a government. The forging of such coalitions is hardly foreign to our presidential system. The difference is that such bargaining used to take place within and across our two major parties — in concert as well as in tension with the executive branch of government. Before they went extinct, there were liberal northeastern Republicans and conservative southern Democrats; they would hold unruly and fractious national conventions in search of consensus presidential candidates. They would routinely create bipartisan legislative majorities on everything from civil rights to tax cuts to welfare reform.

Those days appear to be over. The variegated beast known as the Republican Party has formed a government and, as in a parliamentary system, it's the leaders of the winning party who have determined which priorities the government will pursue, and in what order. And because President Trump has thus far obediently behaved like a member of a parliamentary coalition, rather than an actor with his own agency and source of legitimacy, the leaders of the legislature report a "high level of satisfaction" with his administration. His tweeting, his executive-order photo-ops, his pissant job-rescue operations in Indiana and Michigan: They are but sound and fury next to the real, substantive action on Capitol Hill.

This could all blow up in their faces, of course. But if it does, it won't be due to Trump's unpopularity. It will be due to unbridgeable divisions within the Republican Party coalition. Unlike in parliamentary systems, however, neither Republicans, Democrats, nor the public at large can get rid of our head of state via "no confidence" or "loss of supply" parliamentary votes. We have to wait an interminable-seeming four years for that.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bannon; gop; ryan; trump
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1 posted on 03/22/2017 10:15:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
In other words, Establishment is stuck with him. Too bad.
2 posted on 03/22/2017 10:26:05 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (dead parakeet + lost fishing gear = freep all day)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Ratings cooked from same people that said Hillary would win ?
3 posted on 03/22/2017 10:27:23 PM PDT by seastay
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To: TigerLikesRooster

And all this talk of “impeachment” or the “25th Amendment” is just moonshine to placate the left-wing base and the #NeverTrumpers.


4 posted on 03/22/2017 10:33:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (You cannot invade the mainland US. There'd be a rifle behind every blade of grass.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

More nattering from the nabobs.


5 posted on 03/22/2017 10:34:07 PM PDT by eddie willers
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I do not think the numbers reported are real. Fake news polls designed to influence and not reflect opinion.


6 posted on 03/22/2017 10:36:43 PM PDT by jospehm20
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To: eddie willers

"nattering nabobs of negativism"


7 posted on 03/22/2017 10:48:21 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (Everywhere is freaks and hairies Dykes and fairies Tell me where is sanity?)
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To: jospehm20
Of course. They won't stop it even if Trump has spectacular success. He has to go after them soon. There are so many indictment materials on them. Let them spend all their time on their legal defense. Otherwise they continue to throw things at him until one of them sticks. In time one of them will.
8 posted on 03/22/2017 10:50:56 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (dead parakeet + lost fishing gear = freep all day)
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To: jospehm20

I agree. One day they are 55% then the next 49% then the next 37%. No way is that a real life poll number.

They simply don’t fluctuate that much over the course of just one week unless a very major event happened and none has.


9 posted on 03/22/2017 10:53:08 PM PDT by Boomer (The modern day leftist dems are the party of criminally insane propagandists.)
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The Lying MSM sticking with its bogus stats.

The MSM is the Country’s greatest threat.


10 posted on 03/22/2017 10:57:57 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Abysmal popularity?

Considering how much conservatives are usually pilloried
unfairly by those who have the responsibility of
disseminating information to the public I would say
that Trump’s popularity is pretty significant. With
the kind of crap that is being published and
broadcast I am surprised that Trump’s approval
rating isn’t down in the teens.


11 posted on 03/22/2017 11:05:58 PM PDT by Sivad (The Federalist #46)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Why President Trump’s abysmal popularity rating won’t hurt him - because the numbers are false, agenda driven push poll numbers that are fake.

No one believes them.


12 posted on 03/22/2017 11:29:58 PM PDT by rdcbn (.... when Poets buy guns, tourist season is over ...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The poll numbers won’t hurt Trump for the same reason the author’s abuse of his wife and children won’t hurt the author.

He doesn’t abuse his wife and children, you say? Then you get my point, don’t you?


13 posted on 03/23/2017 12:15:33 AM PDT by sourcery (Non Acquiescit: "I do not consent" (Latin))
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

media and GOPe obssesed over trump’s unfavorable ratings during the election yet he still won


14 posted on 03/23/2017 1:54:30 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: TigerLikesRooster; 2ndDivisionVet
Imagine . . .one of our two major parties was captured by a splinter group defined by an unusually virulent (from the point of view of other advanced democracies) strain of anti PRO government ideology.

Talk about through the looking glass - My slight change is exactly what HAS happened.

Without attempting to settle this question, let me introduce a new one: What if our system is mutating into a new hybrid of presidentialism and parliamentarism? Consider, in this light, Trump's meager approval rating not as a standalone public measure of his performance,

This is what can happen if you go around touting a "living constitution". Unscrupulous politicians (almost redundant, I know) can change the government in whatever direction most benefits them. Funny how that works.

To your point, Tiger - I am certain you are correct. I believe that if Trump were to direct that all those guilty of espionage and sedition in the government and the Democrat party were to be prosecuted, the justice system would crash. The corruption is so deep that it will be almost impossible to punish everyone who's guilty.

15 posted on 03/23/2017 2:49:16 AM PDT by Hardastarboard (Three most useless words on the internet - "Watch the Video")
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To: Hardastarboard

>>The corruption is so deep that it will be almost impossible to punish everyone who’s guilty.
************************************************
And yet it must happen if we are ever to restore gov’t credibility and citizen confidence in gov’t.

There will be plenty of jail room for all gov’t traitors, just as soon as they release those being held for minor, non-violent crimes.

It must happen if our Republic is to truly be restored.


16 posted on 03/23/2017 2:53:15 AM PDT by Kalamata
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Why President Trump's abysmal popularity rating* won't hurt him



* ...among Liberals, Democrats, napolenic judges, Rinos and other non-aligned Gibsmedats...

17 posted on 03/23/2017 3:00:09 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Only idiots pay attention to polls after Brexit and the last election.


18 posted on 03/23/2017 3:05:17 AM PDT by Mechanicos
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To: Mechanicos

“Trumps abysmal popularity rating”.........

A fabricated product of the media.


19 posted on 03/23/2017 3:42:59 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: Boomer

“I agree. One day they are 55% then the next 49% then the next 37%. No way is that a real life poll number.”

Two different pollsters Gallup is using special sauce,Rasmussen still has him around 50%


20 posted on 03/23/2017 3:59:15 AM PDT by Emergencyawesome
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