The opposition is mobilizing

There’s a reason Mike Johnson would prefer that Republican House members not hold town halls at all:

No one was expecting a love fest when Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, faced constituents in his suburban swing district on Sunday night. Still, even he seemed surprised by the night’s first clash — over the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Please tell me you’re not objecting to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Lawler asked incredulously after some members of the audience inside a high school auditorium audibly groaned when he suggested reciting it.

They acquiesced, and several hundred attendees labored to their feet to say the pledge, but not without indicating why they believed its words had come to ring hollow.

“Authoritarian!” one man yelled, an apparent reference to President Trump.

“Support the Constitution!” bellowed another.

So it went for nearly two hours as Mr. Lawler, one of the House’s most vulnerable Republicans and a potential candidate for governor of New York, faced a torrent of criticism from liberal constituents over almost everything, from Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar tax cut plan to how brightly the room was lit.

It was a scene that has repeated itself across the country over the past two weeks for the small group of Republicans who have defied party leaders’ advice and convened feedback sessions with the people they represent, many of them anxious, angry and primed to vent over a president who they believe is acting with unchecked power.

The discontent in swing districts is particularly important given the extremely narrow margins Republicans are working with in the House, although speaking of irresponsible choices the margins would be even narrower were it not for two vacancies creates by Democrats insisting on running in safe seats with terminal illnesses.

Trump is taking this as expected:

President Donald Trump is fuming after a series of recent polls have found that his favorability rating among Americans has continued to drop — in some cases into the thirties. 

In a wild rant today, the president even wrote on Truth Social that certain pollsters are “criminals” and “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.”

“They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse,” Trump wrote. “They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9% at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” 

It’s not only Republicans who suddenly stop believing that polling works when they don’t tell them what they want to hear, of course, but it doesn’t seem like Trump is inclined to stop his own political bleeding.