Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas appeared on CNN earlier this week and had nothing but positive things to say about Elon Musk and the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency. “I think it’s good for us to have this dialogue,” the GOP congressman said. “DOGE is very popular in my district.”
A day earlier, The Associated Press reported that Republican Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, expressed great optimism about the 2026 election cycle — because, the North Carolinian said, “The cuts pushed by the Department of Government Efficiency are resonating with voters.”
There’s a whole lot of evidence to the contrary. Consider the latest national poll from Quinnipiac University, which included a summary of public attitudes about Donald Trump’s biggest campaign donor and his radical DOGE endeavor.
Sixty percent of voters disapprove of the way Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, are dealing with workers employed by the federal government, while 36 percent approve. … Fifty-four percent of voters think Elon Musk and DOGE are hurting the country, while 40 percent think they are helping the country.
The day before the Quinnipiac data was released, a national CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that Americans’ attitudes toward Musk “are largely negative.”
Just 35% of Americans express a positive view of Musk, with 53% rating him negatively. … Roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Musk has neither the right experience nor the right judgment to make changes to the way the government works. There is uneasiness about Musk even among some of the president’s supporters: 28% of those who see Trump’s changes to the government as necessary doubt the tech billionaire has the judgment to carry them out.
This comes on the heels of a Washington Post/Ipsos poll that found the billionaire Republican megadonor with a 34% approval rating. (For more information on the surveys’ methodologies and margins of error, click on any of the above links.)
The obvious response to results like these is that public attitudes toward Musk are of limited relevance. He is not an elected official; his name will probably never appear on a ballot; and he need not worry about re-election. Perhaps, the argument goes, he has the luxury of indifference when it comes to the prevailing political winds. The closer one looks, however, the harder it is to believe this argument. Even putting aside the likelihood that Musk’s popularity (or lack thereof) will affect his business empire and its stockholders, the more politically salient point is that Republicans’ interests have suddenly become intertwined with the DOGE initiative — which necessarily means that as his public standing sinks, Musk is likely to drag his GOP allies down with him. All of which brings us back to the NRCC chair, who apparently believes “the cuts pushed by the Department of Government Efficiency are resonating with voters.” My follow-up questions for Hudson are simple: Are you sure? Are you willing to bet your party’s near-future on those assumptions?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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