http://theweek.com/articles/576757/how-gop-leadership-hit-rock-bottom-baseHow the GOP leadership hit rock bottom with its base
W. James Antle III
When conservatives held a Washington, D.C., rally last week in opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran, which names do you suppose inspired the loudest boos from the crowd? Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and John Kerry would be good guesses. So would Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But none of those are the right answer.
Instead, it was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, the two most important Republican leaders in Washington, who seemed to get the loudest boos. When Dave Brat, who won his Virginia congressional seat by beating then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a GOP primary last year, mentioned the pair, the conservative crowd erupted in a thunder of boos.
Judging from these roars of disapproval, there's a segment of the conservative base that dislikes top Republican congressional leaders as much as they dislike the most liberal members of the Obama administration — or even the mullahs and ayatollahs in Iran.
No matter how well attended, one rally isn't necessarily representative of broader conservative sentiment. But there are plenty of other data points. A Pew poll from earlier this year found the Republican Party's popularity waning. The decline was especially sharp among Republicans themselves.
You can see it in Tea Party and conservative fundraising appeals, where primary challenges against the Republican establishment are as popular with some donors as beating Democrats, and where criticizing McConnell and Boehner is as common as Hillary-bashing.
Most of all, you can see it in the rise of Donald Trump and, to a lesser extent, Ben Carson. These are two candidates who have never held office and have nothing to do with current Republican leadership. That last fact is more important to some conservatives than whether Carson and Trump take conservative stands on important policy matters.
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