It turns out that 25% of Republicans don’t like their own party.
The Republican Party has a structural problem, in that it has only two main constituencies: the very wealthy and the white Religious Right. Both are tiny but powerful minorities. Neither is at all representative of the US population. Both want to impose policies on the whole country that suit them but which are unwelcome to most people.
The poll also shows that 60% of Americans in general don’t like the GOP, which is what pollsters call “high negatives.” It is one thing to be an independent or generally a Democratic, another to actively despise the Republican Party. Even 60% of independents don’t like the GOP.
The Republican business elite wants to avoid paying taxes and to saddle the middle class with the tax burden instead. The evangelicals and right-wing Catholics want to impose their moral strictures on the rest of the country. Both policies look selfish and unfair.
It is their indebtedness to the religious Right that causes Republicans to oppose things like gay marriage, which now has the support of some two-thirds of Americans. As they move out of the mainstream to the margins of national politics, they look narrow-minded and selfish.
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