House Speaker Paul Ryan just got even more bad news on Tuesday: His own constituents like President Donald Trump more than him and think his Obamacare 2.0 bill is bad legislation.
A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling from March 9 to March 10 of 519 voters in Wisconsin’s first congressional district finds that a majority—50 percent—have a favorable view of President Donald Trump. Only 47 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump, while three percent are unsure. Ryan, meanwhile, has only 49 percent in his district who have a favorable view of him, while 44 percent have an unfavorable view and seven percent are unsure. That means more people in Paul Ryan’s own district like Donald Trump more than they like Paul Ryan.
If that news was not bad enough for Ryan, his own constituents are aligned against his Obamacare 2.0 bill—also called RINO-CARE, Ryancare, or Obamacare Lite—the American Health Care Act. “Do you support or oppose Paul Ryan and the Republicans’ new health care bill, which would cause millions to lose their health insurance?” respondents were asked. The bill, which does not repeal Obamacare and would, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and a separate internal Trump administration White House analysis, cause anywhere from 24 to 26 million people to lose health insurance over the next decade, only gets 37 percent of Ryan’s district in support of it—while 46 percent, a strong plurality, oppose Ryan’s healthcare bill. Sixteen percent are unsure.
The news of this survey showing that Trump has eclipsed Ryan in popularly in Ryan’s own oasis of political solidarity—Ryan has long held his Janesville home and his district as a whole out as a place where he can escape from the day-to-day battles in Washington—comes on the heels of the revelation that Ryan said in October he will never defend Trump again.
“I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future,” Ryan said in the audio of an Oct. 10, 2016, conference call, obtained by Breitbart News.
The audio of the call was published by Breitbart News late Monday evening, and on it Ryan details for House Republicans—in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape release about Trump during the election—how he was abandoning the Republican presidential nominee on the campaign trail. On it, Ryan walks through how he disinvited Trump from a rally in Wisconsin’s first congressional district–where Trump is now more popular than Ryan.
In response to the audio, Ryan’s waning popularity, and his failures on healthcare, House GOP members have begun discussions about replacing Ryan as Speaker of the House with a Republican alternative more interested in working well with President Trump.