It wasn’t a normal convention and these weren’t normal Republican delegates, but the voters representing their states at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio, shared a similarity with a lot of American voters: They aren’t happy with Congress, and they don’t really know why.
You might think Republican delegates would be highly engaged citizens ready to detail their complaints about Congress ― if they had complaints at all. But while most of the more than two dozen delegates who spoke to The Huffington Post said they had negative feelings about congressional Republicans, they couldn’t really explain them, beyond chastising GOP lawmakers for being out of touch with voters and not pushing back hard enough against Democrats and President Barack Obama.
“The Republican Party, by and large, you know, the leadership, what they call ‘the elites,’ they do not care about the average voter,” Illinois delegate James Devors told HuffPost last week.
“Everyone in Washington, they’re in their little bubble, they’re so far removed from what’s going on in real America, what’s happening to real Americans, they just ― they don’t understand it, they don’t see it,” he added.
That may sound like a generic complaint, but it was about the clearest explanation any delegate could offer to explain the ire toward Congress and GOP leadership.
It’s also an attitude mirrored by many Republican voters in this country. In a new Morning Consult poll, 23 percent of Republican voters say leaders in their party do not care about people like them, and 46 percent of respondents said their party has “pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”
In one poll last year, only 23 percent of respondents said Republicans were keeping the promises they made during the campaign, and the congressional approval rating recently fell to 10 percent.
All of that may explain why voters are turning to Donald Trump to shake up Washington. But if those voters are anything like the delegates who represented them in Cleveland, they’re operating off of an imperfect understanding of Congress.
“GOP delegates' discontent with party leaders is notable, particularly when it’s based on incomplete or even faulty information.”
While the delegates HuffPost talked to were generally upset at GOP leadership for not doing enough to push back against Democrats, they also found ways to blame Democrats for Republican inaction, even when it didn’t make sense to do so.
Texas delegate Nelson Spear pointed out that Obama was late with his budget blueprint to Congress numerous times and often could not find Democratic support for it. But when HuffPost told Spear that Republicans had not adopted their own budget this year, he blamed Obama and Democrats all the same.
“I’m not saying there are not problems within the Republican Party,” he said. “I’m just saying that, with the atmosphere of noncooperation we have from the executive branch, it makes things ― it really shuts the atmosphere down.”
Budgets are typically adopted with the support of the party in charge ― at least, that’s been the case in Congress in recent years. When HuffPost informed Spear that budgets typically pass on a party-line vote, something that didn’t happen this year, he responded, “Well, that’s what the platform’s about,” referring to the GOP document adopted at the convention.
Illinois delegate Eugene Cummings echoed Spear, seemingly blaming Democrats when he was told that Republicans had not adopted a budget of their own this year. “That’s got to be a bipartisan thing,” he insisted.
Informed that Republicans traditionally adopt a budget with just Republican votes, Cummings said Republicans were “doing the best they can with the opposition they have on the other side.”
That was right after Cummings said he wanted Republicans to be more proactive in standing up to the Obama administration, pointing to the Benghazi investigation as an area in which Republicans had not pushed back hard enough. “It didn’t appear that they were using tools available to them, for example, subpoenas,” Cummings said. (For the record, more than 100 people testified before the Benghazi committee.)
It’s one thing for voters to be unaware of every twist and turn in Congress. Much of it is meaningless, outside of the messaging ― and it’s entirely reasonable for the average American to ignore most of what Congress is doing day to day. But these are Republican delegates, active in their party and playing a crucial role in naming the GOP nominee. Their discontent with party leaders ― which manifested itself with delegates booing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ― is notable, particularly when it’s based on incomplete or even faulty information.
Some of this confusion may be due to the new delegates that Trump brought to the convention. One delegate from California, who told HuffPost that he’d been to five conventions, said he normally knows 95 percent of the delegates from his state. This year, he only knew about 5 percent, he said.
“I’ve never seen a convention with the kind of delegation that we have or any of the other states have that are made up of everyday people that don’t make a business out of politics,” the delegate said. “And it’s really refreshing.”
This delegate said he knew “too much about how Congress works” to be upset with Republican leaders, mentioning a 60-vote threshold and a president who has vetoed “a lot of legislation.”
When HuffPost argued that Obama had not vetoed that much legislation ― he’s vetoed the least number of bills (10) since President Warren G. Harding ― the delegate claimed that, “when you get down to it,” Obama had vetoed a lot, actually.
“Are we asking questions or having an argument and debate?” the delegate said, eventually ending the interview and refusing to give his name.
For an election in which rhetoric and feelings mattered more than policies and facts, the GOP convention and its delegates seemed to mirror the GOP race and the voters themselves.
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