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Huh: Share of Americans who think government is most important problem reaches record high


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huh-share-americans-think-government-important-problem-reaches-record-high

Allahpundit

February 18, 2019

In the 55 years that Gallup has been tracking “government” as an option when it asks what the most important problem facing the country is, not once had the share who gave that answer reached 35 percent. Not during Watergate, not during the Reagan-era backlash to big government, not during the tea-party fad. Never.

Five years ago a younger, more naive me would have treated this as evidence that Americans want to shrink the federal leviathan. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

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Simple, says Gallup. The “problems” people think of when they complain about government have to do with its ability to function, not its size: “Roughly half of Republicans, Democrats and independents who say the government is the most important problem point to gridlock, lack of bipartisanship, both parties or other general concerns about the way government is operating.” Follow the link and eyeball the third graph, which shows the percentage of Democrats, Republicans, and independents since February of last year who think government is the country’s biggest problem. Given the continued growth in spending, you might expect Republican discontent to at least match that of Democrats. Nope. The share of Dems has exceeded the share of Republicans in each of the past 12 months, sometimes doubling the percentage of the “small-government party.” (Independents have frequently, although not always, rated government as the most important problem more than Republicans have as well.) Only this month have the two parties reached near-parity, and it’s easy to see why. The shutdown has embittered both sides, with righties suddenly furious at the new Democratic roadblock to Trump’s agenda in Congress.

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