What Are The Popular Republican Policy Proposals?

Much of the drama of the Trump era has surrounded the administration’s involvement with Russia, Trump’s use of the office for self-enrichment, and the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to exercise any oversight. But the main policy drama has been what will happen with the Affordable Care Act. There are two reasons the ACA has been the first item on the GOP agenda: 1) They’ve been talking about repealing it for seven years now; 2) For somewhat obscure legislative reasons, they have to pass ACA repeal before they can move on to their real goal, permanent tax reform.

The ACA project now seems to be bogged down in the House, with Senator Rand Paul and various Democrats putting on a show of trying to find the House GOP plan. Part of the problem with repealing the ACA, or changing it significantly, is that the ACA is now quite popular, with more Americans viewing it favorably than unfavorably. Only 31 percent favor a straight repeal.

Suppose the GOP wanted to set aside their health care plans and move on to more popular parts of their agenda. What would the more popular parts be? Is there any distinctly Republican policy proposal that has broad appeal with the public?

The answer is basically no. I gathered these Republican policy ideas from the Republican 2016 platform, Paul Ryan’s Better Way, and Trump’s speeches. If you think I missed one, let me know.

Lower taxes on the rich (76–18 against lower taxes on rich in Quinnipiac; 61% say upper income bracket pays too little in Gallup)

Lower taxes on corporations (In Gallup, 67% say corporations pay too little; In a Politico poll (Fig.9), only 22% favor lowering taxes on corporations; In Quinnipiac, 50% against lower taxes on businesses and corporations, vs. 43% in favor)

Eliminate regulations on businesses (Quinnipiac 54–34 against removing regulations; Gallup: 47% say “too much” regulation vs. 49% “too little” or “right amount”)

Leave NAFTA (Gallup: 48% say NAFTA has been good for US, 46% say bad; worth noting that while Trump has said he doesn’t like NAFTA, many Republican members of Congress do not agree)

Eliminate environmental regulations (Quinnipiac 63–27 against; Gallup 56% prioritize protecting environment over economic growth, 37% prioritize economic growth)

Build a wall on the Mexican border (Pew: 62% oppose; Quinnipiac: 60% oppose)

Mass deportations (CBS: 23% support requiring illegal immigrants to leave country ; Quinnipiac: 19% support deporting all illegal immigrants)

Ban Muslims from entering the country (PPP: 65% oppose)

Trump’s executive order banning refugees and visas from 7 countries (polling initially mixed, recently mostly bad: Fox poll 52% disapprove; Pew: 59% disapprove)

Pull out of Paris agreement on climate change (71% think US should participate)

Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines (Quinnipiac: 51% against, 38% in favor; Pew: 48% oppose, 42% favor)

Military spending (Gallup: 37% say US spends too little on defense)

Defund Planned Parenthood (Quinnipiac: 62% oppose vs. 31% support; although you can flip it to 56% support for defunding if you mention in the question that PP is “the nation’s largest abortion provider”)

School vouchers (Surprisingly hard to find good, recent polling on this; best I found was this poll, which has vouchers at 50% approval and falling, but also higher with Democrats than Republicans)

Voting restrictions (Gallup has kind of a mix — 80% favor voter ID laws, which Republicans support, but 63% favor automatic voter registration, which Republicans oppose, and 80% favor early voting, which Republicans have tried to limit)

A caveat: Issue-specific polling is notoriously unreliable, for two reasons. First, the wording of a question can have a huge impact on the answers — you can see that in the polling on Planned Parenthood mentioned above, but it’s true for most of these issues. If you frame the question in the right way, you can get people to go along with the Republican position.

Second, the public’s position can change dramatically once the issue is active in Congress and gets more politicized. Look at what happened when Obamacare was being debated in Congress for an example:

There was longstanding, broad support for the federal government taking on responsibility for providing Americans with health insurance. Once one party started making the political sausage, support polarized and declined, and only now, as the new policy has been in place for a while, has support recovered.

There don’t seem to be any Republican issues that are starting out from a point of longstanding, broad support. Maybe school vouchers or voter ID laws? Putting aside for the moment that neither of these is a very good idea on policy grounds, they’re both really state-level policy areas.

So where could Republicans turn for a popular legislative win? It seems that such a victory would have to include some Democratic ideas — maybe a compromise on immigration reform, although Republicans have tried to move in that direction many times and each time been thwarted by their base, most memorably when Eric Cantor lost his primary in 2014. Republicans seem stuck once again with the fundamental problem that their base accepts no compromises, but the policies the base favors are unpopular with the country as a whole.