Donald Trump will be inaugurated Friday as a historically unpopular new president elected in a close election but one with a landslide level of political capital to spend with Republicans in Congress.
Trump’s approval rating is underwater in nine public opinion polls conducted since Jan. 1, averaging 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics.com average — horrible numbers for a president-elect. But Trump’s position with congressional Republicans couldn’t be better.
Whether out of fear of reprisal, excitement about what they can accomplish together legislatively, or awe over how he won the presidency, Republicans are prepared to give Trump more room to maneuver than a politician in his position might expect.
“I have a responsibility to hear the president out,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said during a brief interview with the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s strong connection with his populist base is one reason Republicans are inclined to follow the president-elect’s leadership, despite his low approval numbers.
House and Senate Republicans have to win re-nomination next year in advance of the midterms, and few want to be on the other end of Trump Twitter bomb that pushes voters toward any opponent who might challenge them in a primary.
Republicans also are impressed with how Trump won. He lost the national popular vote by a few million.
But the New York real estate magnate, having never run for office before, defeated more than a dozen primary opponents. And then, without the help of much of his party, he won a strong Electoral College victory by seizing three states the GOP hadn’t won in a presidential election in three decades and that have long functioned as a sort of Republican Holy Grail: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
There’s also genuine excitement over what Republicans can accomplish with a member of their own party in the White House, after a decade of either being in the minority in Congress, without the presidency, or both.
Tax reform, repealing Obamacare, the ability to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court — none of these would be remotely possible with Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office, and Republicans want to capitalize.
“If you look at what he went through, it’s almost unprecedented,” House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said. “So his numbers, I think, are artificially low. But if he starts to work with Congress and can get health care and tax reform done, his numbers will rise. Its all about effective governing.”
Veteran GOP strategist Alex Conant, who advised Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the 2016 presidential primary, said Trump is in a strong position with Republicans in part because of his independence from the party he leads.
“Trump has political capital because he won the presidency with relatively little help from Congressional Republicans,” Conant said. “He moves into the White House with few political debts.”
Presidents are typically broadly popular with Americans upon assuming office. The divisiveness of the campaign is behind them, and their focus is on national unity.
Trump has conducted his transition differently. He held a series of campaign-style rallies, has fought with political opponents, and continued to take shots at President Obama, Democrats in Congress, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated last November.
It’s no wonder, then, that the president-elect earned low marks on the eve of his inauguration.
That compares to Obama’s 75 percent approval rating during a similar period eight years ago; George W. Bush’s 65 percent in 2001, despite the Supreme Court’s intervention in that election; and Bill Clinton’s 67 percent in 1992.
Even with such approval ratings to begin their presidencies, each of those presidents eventually ran into political trouble. President Ronald Reagan, who won in a true landslide in 1980, found himself unpopular two years later, costing the GOP 28 House seats in the 1982 midterm elections.
But Trump’s political muscle with the majorities that run Congress could result in an unusually long honeymoon, despite beginning his term such a broadly unpopular national figure.
“If you take a look at candidate Trump in the primary and the general, he set a pretty broad aperture for things that he wants to get done,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said. “I think there’s a lot of room for those of us who believe that the American people want right-of-center results — but they want results.”
