President Trump’s approval rating has now fallen to 29%, according to a new Pew report. It never before had been that low.
This detail from Pew is central to understanding the state of play: “Much of the decline has come among Republicans and GOP leaners: Currently, 60% approve of his job performance; 77% approved in August.”
Trump’s cratering rating would suggest that with approval down so much among Republicans and leaners, any door leading to his capture of the GOP nomination in 2024 has effectively closed, though nobody knows what will happen.
At the very least, Trump has forfeited the measure of authority by which he commanded the Republican coalition for four years.
Yet, an alternative interpretation has been shaping up. “It’s still Trump’s party” is the headline on a piece over at Axios published on Thursday, which drops several numbers to argue that Trump still has ownership over the GOP.
“Two-thirds of House Republicans voted to decertify the election results — in the hours after an insurrection,” the story says, noting that “93% of House Republicans voted against impeachment [Wednesday].”
Pointing to a recent Ipsos/Axios poll, the piece notes that “57% of Republicans said Trump should be the 2024 GOP candidate” and that “only 17% think he should be removed from office.”
The numbers aren’t meaningless, but understanding where Trump stands with the GOP requires a more comprehensive look.
Trump obviously still enjoys significant popular support, as evidenced by some of the mentioned polling and by the actions of congressional Republicans over the last two weeks. The Republican Party invested everything in him for four years. To wean off can be healthier than to quit cold turkey.
Doubtless, some unknown number of congressional Republicans probably don’t want to move on, but that 197 Republicans voted against impeachment doesn’t resolutely affirm that they want Trump to keep commanding the levers. Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s explanation, which is that many Republicans interpreted impeachment as participating in their own political repression, is really compelling. In that reading, opposing impeachment was largely about defending against the Democrats, who want to emasculate them, rather than about continually standing with Trump.
Still, others make a case that the article of impeachment itself was poorly drafted. Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who opposed the House election objection effort more vocally than probably any Republican other than Rep. Adam Kinzinger, voted against impeachment on those grounds, saying, “The President of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct: pressuring the Vice President to violate his oath to the Constitution to count the electors.” Roy continued: “Unfortunately, my Democrat colleagues drafted articles that I believe are flawed and unsupportable, focusing on the legal terms of incitement and insurrection … The danger for open speech and debate in this body and for the republic is high if the House approves the articles as written.”
Roy’s argument would support Shapiro’s interpretation, as well. The idea is, opposition to impeachment shouldn’t only be interpreted as continued cession to Trump.
Those details aside, there is a material difference in the coalition’s relationship to Trump now. The steep approval drop among Republicans and leaners is one piece of it. More than that, among prominent Republicans, including Republican leadership in Congress, everything has changed.
There has been a demonstrable change in tone and in posture among big names. Former Attorney General William Barr rebuked Trump after the riot, saying, “The President’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”
Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, was among a number of Trump appointees who resigned after the riot. DeVos said in her resignation letter to the president, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
Nikki Haley, who was United Nations ambassador under Trump and who, by all indications, is jockeying for the Republican nomination, said that his actions will be judged “harshly” by history.
Some have suggested that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “finest hour” was when he denounced the president’s election objection push on the Senate floor. Following the riot, McConnell is reportedly “furious” with Trump and will “listen to the legal arguments” whenever the Senate holds an impeachment trial.
Besides them, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, voted to impeach Trump on Wednesday. And House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who didn’t support impeachment, rejected calls from within the caucus to oust her from her role as conference chairwoman because of her vote. An ouster would have been the “Trump party” move.
These are stark departures from the president, unseen during the Trump era until now. The notion that “it’s still Trump’s party” fails to situate the divergences between Trump, that share of Republican voters who now disapprove of him, and the Republican power players who quite clearly are not entertaining Trump as a viable path forward.
