Until Republicans sober up, the myth of Tipnronnie is a joke

Overall, the three GOP candidates who have never held political office continue to command amajority of support among Republican voters – combining for 52% in the current poll. Ted Cruz, while a U.S. Senator, could also be considered more of an outsider than insider. That leaves the “establishment” candidates with just 25% support among them.

In this context, then, it is not surprising that more Republican voters say that the national
Republican Party does a bad job (50%) representing their concerns than say it does a good job (41%).One problem for the national GOP is that this attitude spans the ideological spectrum, including Republicans who call themselves very conservative voters (51% bad job to 39% good job), somewhat conservative (48% to 43%), and moderate to liberal (51% to 41%). Tea Party supporters (59% bad job to 32% good job) are even more likely than Republicans who have a neutral or negative view of the movement (46% bad job to 46% good job) to feel the national GOP does not represent their concerns.

This attitude extends to the base’s view of the party leadership in Washington. A majority of 57% are dissatisfied with the Republican leaders in Congress – including 29% who are very dissatisfied and 28% who are somewhat dissatisfied. Only 42% are satisfied, including just 5% who are very satisfied and 37% who are somewhat satisfied. Majorities of all ideological groups are dissatisfied.

“The turmoil over selecting a new Speaker of the House reflects an unhappy party base. Because this disaffection reaches every corner of the GOP electorate, there is no clear indication about which route the party should take to right this ship,” said Murray.

The conservative Freedom Caucus stymied a smooth transition after John Boehner’s surprise resignation announcement last month. However, somewhat more Republican voters say that the Freedom Caucus and similar conservative members of Congress have too little (39%) rather than too much (25%) power, with another 21% saying they have the right amount of influence.

The poll offers some contradictory advice for party leaders on how to handle this group – 39% of GOP voters say the Republican Congressional leadership should stand up to the Freedom Caucus more, while 35% say it should do more of what the Freedom Caucus wants. Not surprisingly, there is a strong ideological divide in this opinion – 47% of very conservative voters say the GOP leadership should give Monmouth University Polling Institute 10/20/15 in more to the Freedom Caucus while 52% of moderate to liberal Republicans say the leadership should stand up to the caucus.

A slight majority (52%) of Republican voters believe that the moderate and conservative wings of the Republican Party in Congress will be able to work together in the coming year – but only 7% say this is very likely, with most (45%) saying it is just somewhat likely. More than 4-in-10 say the two wings working together is either not too likely (30%) or not at all likely (13%).