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While some of the top priorities of GOP presidential candidates and congressional Republicans may be playing well in the right-wing echo chamber, it’s a completely different story when it comes to American voters as a whole, who view these policies with great skepticism.
Former President Donald Trump, for example, just wants to talk about how he “won” the 2020 election and, once back in office, will pardon the people who stormed the Capitol on his behalf on January 6. According to a new poll, both of these “issues” (for a lack of a better word) are winners among Republican primary voters.
However, Americans overall feel very differently about them. Only 23 percent of them want their candidate to go on and on about the Big Lie, while 56 percent of them are less likely to support someone who says Trump won in 2020.
Pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists is even more unpopular with a net negative of 39 points.
Things for Trump’s biggest rival for the GOP nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are looking even worse. As it turns out, his signature issue of fighting wokeness is even a loser among GOP primary voters.
Asked whether they are more or less likely to support a candidate who “threatens to penalize or financially harm businesses that make statements on LGBTQ and other issues that they don’t agree with,” just 12 percent of voters said they look favorably on this type of political strong-arming.
Surprisingly, at least for people who follow Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, even Republicans feel that way. A mere 16 percent of them said this would make them more likely to support a candidate while 58 percent felt the opposite way.
It doesn’t look much better for other top Republican priorities. Candidates who want to ban abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy may find support among GOP voters (52-30 in favor), but this position is a loser in a general election (29-57 against).
And wanting to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits, which has always been a long-term goal of Republicans (they call it “addressing entitlement programs”), is the biggest non-starter of them all with a net negative of -65 among all voters and -47 among GOP supporters.
Then there are some issues on which the public is just about evenly split, such as whether teachers should discuss gender identity and sexual orientations with their students prior to high school, whether states should ban transgender adolescents from taking puberty-blocking medication, or whether the US should support Ukraine with weapons and money.
There is one issue, however, in which Republicans are “winning” (once again, for a lack of a better word): Sending troops to the border to stop illegal drugs and people. The former enjoys a net positive of 26 points among all voters and the latter scores +6 points.
So that’s a silver lining for GOP candidates, especially seeing how there will almost certainly be massive “convoys” of “illegals” making their way toward the border ahead of the election.
