Throughout his political career, Donald Trump has tested boundaries and gauged public reactions. When Republican voters expressed their approval of one of his ideas, Trump took their support as evidence of its merit. When the GOP base balked, he’d back off.
The problem, of course, is that Republican voters throughout the Trump era have demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for radicalism.
A year ago this week, for example, ahead of Iowa’s GOP presidential caucuses, a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Poll found that many likely Republican caucusgoers in the state actually approved of Trump saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country and targeting Americans he disagrees with as “vermin.” (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.)
A national CBS News poll released a month later similarly found that 82% of Republicans supported Trump’s anti-immigrant language, even as the then-candidate echoing similar phrasing used by Adolf Hitler. (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.)
Why did Trump lean in so heavily on scurrilous anti-immigration rhetoric? Because the voters he cared about most effectively gave him a green light to keep going.
The broader phenomenon, however, isn’t limited to “poisoning the blood” screeds. The president-elect has also talked about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions and creating a temporary American “dictatorship.”
There’s fresh evidence that his supporters aren’t especially concerned about this, either. Monmouth University released the results of its latest national survey this week:
Most Democrats and independents would be upset if President-elect Donald Trump suspended laws and constitutional provisions to go after his political enemies. However, few Republicans say this would bother them a lot….
As is often the case, the exact wording of the questions was of interest. In this instance, Monmouth initially asked respondents, “Donald Trump made statements suggesting that he could suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies if he is elected president again. Do you see these statements as something he will seriously do if elected, or more of an exaggeration?”
Overall, the public was narrowly divided, though the partisan gap was enormous: 77% of Democrats said they perceived the president-elect’s rhetoric as serious, while 71% of Republicans said he was exaggerating.
But it was the follow-up question that mattered more: “If Donald Trump did suspend some laws and constitutional provisions, would that bother you a lot, bother you a little, or not bother you at all?”
A plurality of Republicans in the survey (36%) said it wouldn’t bother them at all if Trump suspended some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies, while an additional 34% said it would only bother them “a little” if the incoming president took such a step.
Fewer than 1 in 4 Republicans — just 23% — said they would be bothered “a lot” if Trump suspended some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political opponents.
If it were just one national poll, it’d be tempting to see it as an outlier, but The Washington Post published an analysis noting the frequency with which we’ve seen related data — just this year. One poll, for example, found 57% of Republicans saying it’d be a good thing if Trump were able to act “without waiting for Congress and the courts.” (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.)
Another survey found 52% of Republicans agreeing that Americans need “a strong president who should be allowed to rule without too much interference from courts and Congress.” (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.)
I’m also reminded of a Fox News poll, released exactly a year ago, which found that 30% of self-identified Trump voters — nearly a third — were on board with a president “break[ing] some laws to set things right.” (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.) That was followed by an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that asked respondents whether they agreed that conditions in the United States have deteriorated to the point that “we need a leader who is willing to break some rules to set things right.” Among Republicans, a 56% majority endorsed the idea. (Click this link for more information on the poll’s margin of error and methodology.) There’s been a lot of discussion of late about Trump’s hostility toward democracy and embrace of an authoritarian-style vision. What’s less appreciated is the degree to which rank-and-file Republican voters have embraced related attitudes. I’m reminded anew of something Rachel told viewers in an A block that aired a year ago this week about aspiring leaders who tell voters that some threats “justify terminating the Constitution.” “It is designed to make you believe that a democratic system with checks and balances, and the constraint of the rule of law, and elections where people are voted out sometimes, and divided power within government, those things are not up to stopping these terrible evils that threaten us — the terrible threat that some people among us pose to the rest of us,” Rachel explained. “This stuff is tactically efficient. It’s designed to make us think that we need a strong man. We need a tough man. We don’t need a legal system in all its constraints. We don’t need a court system. We don’t really need a political process. We don’t need politicians. We don’t need Congress. We need strength, will, action, revenge, broken rules, maybe even violence. “These statements are not just supposed to shock you, they’re supposed to work on you, to make you believe we need something new and extreme to deal with our terrible problems, if only for a little while — maybe just a temporary dictatorship. And these tactics have a terrible history of working really well.” The Monmouth poll suggests the tactics are still working well — at least among members of one of the nation’s major political parties. (According to the polling institute’s news release, the Monmouth University Poll was sponsored and conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute from Dec. 5 to Dec. 10 with a probability-based national random sample of 1,006 adults ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted in English and included 208 live landline telephone interviews, 540 live cellphone interviews and 258 online surveys via a cellphone text invitation. The question results had a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points for the full sample.)
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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