Is the Republican Party Already Circling The Drain?

Even Republican voters hate the assholes they elected to Congress. Most of the dumbed-down, Foxified party base is in full revolt against their own party's twisted establishment, whether or not they realize that they themselves put them in their positions. 

The Des Moines Register Iowa poll that came out Sunday shows that among the party's base, approval of Republicans in Congress is horrendous. 54% say they are unsatisfied, and on top of that another 21% say they are "mad as hell" at the Republicans in Congress. That makes 75%. Among Democrats, only 8% are "mad as hell" at their congressional delegation and another 43% are unsatisfied-- total 51%, not great... but not 75% either. (Also worth noting, 94% of Democrats and 91% of Republicans say they are either unsatisfied or "mad as hell" about the amount of money sloshing around in politics, a core Bernie Sanders issue.)

A Qunnipiac poll released Monday showed similar results. Neither party is well-liked, but the survey showed that "voters disapprove 81-12% of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job and give the Republican Party a negative 31-58% favorability. Disapproval of Democrats in Congress is 66-27% and the Democratic Party gets a negative 40-50% favorability." The poll found that 69% of Republicans disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling their job. 37% of Democrats disapprove of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling their job.

Republican voters don't especially hate their congressmembers for the reasons normal people hate Republicans in Congress. Trump is certainly turning the Republican Party brand into more of a racist mess than it already is... but that isn't especially unpopular among Republicans. In fact, that's exactly what many of them want! White nationalist groups-- KKK freaks, neo-Nazis, the whole gamut of bigots and fascist misanthropes-- see Trump as leading their own last stand. Not only has Trump, whose daughter is an observant Jew, not seriously disavowed them, neither have the other Republican presidential hopefuls. Nor have Reince Priebus and the official Republican Party denounced the affinity that outright Nazis are now showing for their party's front-runner. 

But hedge-fund god Jim Chanos thinks the Republicans will lose the White House again next year-- only not because of the racists, Nazis, Trump, or even the contempt with which the base holds their own congressional leaders. Although he's a Biden guy who says even sane Republicans he knows will vote for Biden before they vote for the GOP clown car, his analysis of why the GOP will lose works across the board for Democratic candidates:

In 2016, barring any unforeseen things, we're going to have the stock market near record highs, corporate profit at record highs, gas prices very low. We're going to have mortgage rates very low, house prices at all-time highs. We're going to have universal healthcare. We're going to be at peace. This is not the worst record to run on if you're tied to the Obama administration. Eight years of peace and prosperity-- let's bring in the other guys?

And it isn't just Chanos predicting a Democratic win. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that their Moody's Analytics election model now predicts a Democratic electoral landslide in the 2016 presidential vote-- 326 electoral votes for the Democrats and only 212 for the Republican.

The primary factor driving the results further to the incumbent party in August is lower gasoline prices. Plummeting prices and changing dynamics in global energy markets from Chinese weakness and the Iranian nuclear deal have caused us to significantly lower our gasoline price forecast for the next several years. This variable is very significant to voter sentiment in the model, with lower prices favoring incumbents.