07-18-2018, 01:27 PM
Quote:The Trump administration's scandals threaten to take a toll on Republicans in battleground districts this fall, according to new polling suggesting “culture of corruption” messaging is gaining traction.
Fifty-four percent of voters across 48 Republican-held congressional districts said Republicans are “more corrupt” than Democrats, compared with 46 percent who said Democrats are “more corrupt.”
According to the online survey of 1,200 registered voters, conducted July 2-5, an even higher number of independents hold Republicans responsible for corruption: 60 percent.
Those are welcome numbers to Democrats who have struggled to find their messaging in the run-up to the midterms. In May, the party signaled an effort to tap the “culture of corruption” theme that proved an effective mantra in 2006, when GOP Capitol Hill scandals helped Democrats regain control of the House and Senate.
“The fact that you have these recurring Cabinet scandals, the fact that it keeps happening over and over again, it registers,” said Jesse Lee, spokesman for the Center for American Progress, a progressive policy group behind the poll. “People understand it’s been taken to a new level. There’s no check on it anymore. Trump isn’t pushing back on Congress to keep it under control. Congress isn’t pushing back on Trump.”
The corruption framing today takes a different shape than in 2006, when it largely revolved around the behavior of Republican members of Congress. Now, the focus is on Trump Cabinet members who resigned under an ethics cloud, including former Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/1...oll-728977
Comment: if there is one consistent tendency about Americans across the political spectrum, it is that they do not tolerate corruption or abuse of power. I would not be surprised to find that Americans on the whole think that Republicans are more corrupt -- even if it is because there are more and more powerful Republican politicians and more opportunity for GOP corruption than for Democratic corruption.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.