Fran Coombs – Call it the unconventional convention.
For starters, John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio and an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP nomination this year, didn’t show up even though the convention is in Cleveland.
Gone, too, are the Bushes, Mitt Romney and many other of those who have been the public face of the Republican Party since the Reagan revolution. The problem for many Republicans, though, is that these are also the same people they think betrayed that revolution, pitching instead a big government conservatism with aggressive nation-building ambitions abroad.
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Likely Republican Voters believe GOP leaders have lost touch with the party’s base. That’s what they’ve been saying for years about Republicans in Congress which makes it all the more surprising that the GOP elites were so stunned by Donald Trump’s primary success.
Even after Trump won the Republican presidential nomination with the biggest primary turnout in history, 66% of GOP voters think most of the party’s leaders don’t want to see him elected president. In short, two-out-of-three Republicans believe their so-called leaders don’t care what their voters think.