Rasmussen Reports: 57% of Americans Would Replace Entire Congress

For years, I have joked that randomly selecting one person from the telephone books of each Congressional district would yield a better and more responsible Congress than the one that features the winners of the Democrat and Republican fraternity and sorority war. Today, a Rasmussen Report provided proof that I may not be alone.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.

Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that time, just 17% wanted to keep them.

The partisan breakdown of this poll question is particularly interesting:

There has been a bit of a partisan shift since last fall. With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, it's not surprising to find that the number of Democrats who would vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of Democrats were ready to throw them all out.

While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators, voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected politicians in the House and Senate. That’s up from 62% last year.

Republicans, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly support replacing everyone in the Congress. Their views have not changed. But Republican voters are disenchanted with their team as much as the Congress itself: 69% of GOP Voters say Republicans in Congress are out of touch with
the party base.

The sudden increase in Democrat support for Congress is a bit curious. Last year, the Democrats held the majority, but still only 25% were willing to keep Congress in place as it was. This is likely the result of two years in which the majority party pretended to be in the majority. Democrat leaders spoke like a helpless minority under the thump of the evil Dubya. Big Media covered legislative action in Washington as though President Bush was pulling all the strings. If one landed in America from another planet last fall and watched the campaigns, they would have wrongly believed that Republicans were in the majority during 2007-2008.

It is also interesting that independents are running from Congress in large numbers. These are the folks who helped put President Barry Vladimir Hussein Soetero Obama in the Oval Office. They are the folks who misconstrued what The One meant when he chattered on about "hope" and "change."

And Republicans? They are just as irritated with Congress as ever. Unlike Democrats whose view of big, intrusive government largely rests on which party is running the show, Conservative Republicans felt betrayed by GOP legislators who abandoned principle. Big Government is oppressive regardless of which party is in charge. The untold story of the Tea Party movement and Real America's patriotic awakening is that these rallies are not about Republicans vs. Democrats; the fight is liberty vs. fascism.