Much has been made of the loyalty of Trump’s base as he bumbles and stumbles through the first months of his presidency. All things, however, have their limits.
On Friday, a new Reuters/IPSOS tracking poll showed Trump with a job approval rating of 75 percent among Republicans, which may indicate storm clouds ahead.
The Hill notes that political professionals tend to categorize approval ratings from the president’s own party below 85 percent as worrying and “downright alarming if they go below 80 percent.”
Other polls support the general trend, though not with numbers quite as low as in the Reuters/IPSOS survey, which was conducted after the special counsel appointment to look into Trump-Russia connections.
A great irony in the current political landscape is that a Republican president is doing battle with the FBI and America’s intelligence services when typically Democrats and the left have expressed the most concern with activities of G-men and the like.
Conservatism and law-and-order go hand-in-hand in America, and there are few agencies in American life that exemplify law-and-order more than the FBI. Trump may get some cover by connecting the intelligence community with the Washington swamp and the deep state but butting heads with the house J. Edgar built may not be the best way to keep his base on side.
By the way, in the old films I remember it was always the FBI as the good guys chasing around Russians/Communists as the bad guys. That may have been a long time ago but it still puts Trump on the wrong side of a certain kind of national memory in the country he is trying to lead, especially among older voters.
Photo by Marion S. Trikosko [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons