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Earlier this year, the actor Jon Voight tweeted a video calling Donald Trump the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds many Republicans agree with Voight. But there is one GOP President since Lincoln whom Republicans rate higher than Trump: A majority (59%) of Republicans believe Ronald Reagan was a better president than the current incumbent.

The public overall overwhelmingly agrees that Reagan was a better President.

Americans in general arent anywhere near as enthusiastic as Republicans are about Donald Trump: his overall approval rating of 41% is less than half his 87% approval rating among Republicans, and fewer than half the public chooses President Trump when asked to choose between him and each of the GOP Presidents since the 1950s. When comparing Trump with Richard Nixon the only President to have resigned from office a majority of Americans, 56%, call Nixon the better President of the two. Even more say that about Dwight Eisenhower (69%), Gerald Ford (59%), George H.W.Bush (63%), and George W. Bush (62%).

But 86% of Republicans rank Trump higher than Nixon. And majorities of Republicans rank the current President above Eisenhower (65%), Ford (82%) and both Bushes (71% for each).

Asked to rank all six GOP post-war Presidents (along with Abraham Lincoln), half the public puts the current incumbent dead last. One in three Republicans rank him first, though a majority of them choose either Reagan or Lincoln as the best.

However, among Republicans the Great Emancipator isnt necessarily thought of as the better president. Half of Republicans go even further than Jon Voight, saying that President Trump is a better President than Lincoln. Most of the overall public disagrees.

Which Republicans rank Trump as better than Lincoln? There isnt much difference by gender. 60% of Republicans who call themselves very conservative say Trump is the better President. Nearly the same percentage of Republicans without a college degree agree.

However, there is a clear regional difference: 62% of Republicans in the South say Trump is the better President; 38% pick Lincoln. Those in all other regions are more likely to give credit to Lincoln. 54% of Republicans outside the South say Lincoln was better. Perhaps for some, Abraham Lincolns leadership during the Civil War, against the southern Confederacy, is still remembered, and perhaps resented.

Related: Americans have followed the impeachment hearings but few minds have changed

See the full survey results and toplines from The Economist/YouGov poll

Image: Getty

See more here:
Who is the greatest Republican president? - YouGov US

By all accounts, including their own, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday are going to engage a strategy of pure Stupid, no chaser. On Wednesday, the committee will hear from a series of constitutional experts in what I believe is the vain hope of convincing our slugabed republic that the president* is worthy of being turfed out back to his Florida redoubt. What could be a very valuable civics lesson for the country is going to be conducted with a claque of Republicans determined to turn the whole exercise into a monkeyhouse.

Consider that the Republicans on the HJC include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert. The ranking Republican, Chris Collins of Georgia, no shrinking violet his own self, plans to torture Robertss Rules in several horrible ways to gum up the proceedings, thereby giving his more lunatic colleagues more time to screech and fling poo. And, if this account from The New York Times is to be believed, the committee warfare well may be sadly asymmetrical.

So Nadler is going to try and restrain his more enthusiastic colleagues while Collins frees up his pack of crazoids to let their freak flags fly. Gravitas, because thats worked so well in a country that elected a vulgar talking yam to its highest office. I am already dreading this.

Tom WilliamsGetty Images

Meanwhile, back at the House Intelligence Committee, in an attempt to pre-empt the majority report expected to be released on Tuesday, the Republicans issued their own collection of fairy tales late Monday afternoon. As you might have expected, the Republican report represents an El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago fanzine unlike any other. From CBS News:

Here, for example, are the further adventures of the president* as international crime-buster.

And off to the zoo, we go.

They got nothing. But they can put on a show. And they will.

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The Republicans Will Let Their Freak Flags Fly. The Democrats Will Do 'Gravitas.' - Esquire.com

Eric Swalwell, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET Dec. 2, 2019 | Updated 2:34 p.m. ET Dec. 2, 2019

U.S. and Ukraine relations go further back than the now infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. We explain their relationship. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Ive mostly given up hope of Trump behaving presidentially, but some Republicans are privately disturbed and I hope they will behave congressionally.

The evidence is in, and its overwhelming: Donald J. Trump abused the power of the presidency and your taxpayer dollars $391 million in military aid to pressure a desperate ally to manufacture dirt on his political opponent.

And now we must decide what to do about it.

The Founding Fathers did not leave us helpless to a lawless chief executive; they drafted a Constitution providing that a president could be impeached for treason, briberyor other high crimes and misdemeanors.

They foresaw that a president might work with a foreign power to put his own interests over Americas, or that he might try to profit from his office, or that he might traffic in lies and obstruct justice. They, and we, might not have foreseen that one president would do all of these.

The testimony and evidence were clear from the start. The readout of President Trumps July 25 call with the Ukrainian president shows Trump asked for a favor that would directly assist his own reelection. Trumps chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, later admitted that military aid already appropriated by Congress and approved by the Pentagon was conditioned on Ukrainian investigations, and he saidAmericans should just get over it.

President Donald Trump(Photo: JIM WATSON, AFP/Getty Images)

And that was before the clear and convincing public testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee by a cavalcade of career civil servants and patriots, including several Trump appointees. The unerring direction of thetestimony was that the president used your money and resources to further his personal goals, and everyone in the administrations highest ranks knew this was so. The military aid was released only after the president was told the scheme had been exposed.

Several firsthand, front-row witnesses to this debacle have refused to testify after the president ordered them not to. We must conclude that their testimony would harm the presidents case.

There has been no plausible defense; assessing what happened here is a matter of plain facts and common sense. As a former prosecutor, this might be one of the clearest-cut cases Ive ever seen.

Now the House Intelligence Committee sends its findings to the House Judiciary Committee, which will hold a hearing Wednesday on how to proceed. We will hear from a panel of constitutional experts who will discuss how and why these uncontested violations rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

More on Trump: What swimming in my underwear taught me about getting away with it

2020: Trump can use his 'superpower' to defeat Democrats and their false narratives

This is a final chance for my Republican colleagues to get serious, to honor their oathsand to protect our national security.

Thus far, they have ignored clear evidence and chose instead to resurrect long-since-debunked conspiracy theories, including the Russian talking point that it was Ukraine that interfered in our 2016 election a fact-free claim directly contradicted by the unanimous finding of our intelligence agencies.

Now Republicans must stand up and be counted: Are they OKwith this presidents undebatable abuse of power? Are they prepared for what America becomes if we accept it? Is this the conduct we want to be commonplace in our childrens America?

I have hope that at least some House Republicans are starting to see the light. Behind closed doors, I saw how deeply disturbed some were by the damning details and corroborating evidence that piled up during this process. I saw that the deliberate smearing of career patriots who came in to testify, often over the White Houses objections, didnt sit well with these lawmakers.

Watergate taught us that history looks kindly on those like Sen. Lowell Weickerof Connecticutand Reps. William Cohenof Maine and Tom Railsbackof Illinois who are willing to stand up to their own party to do the right thing. Lemmings usually arent rewarded with historys praisebut rather with a grisly demise at the bottom of a cliff.

So much is at stake. We must ensure that future presidents, no matter their party, are held to account for their actions. We must ensure that foreign governments never feel empowered to interfere in Americas elections. We must make sure that we dont end up looking like Russia, where a dictator relies on disinformation to maintain power. Ironically, the whole point of supporting Ukraine is to limit the number of nations that are remade in Russias despotic image.

Ive mostly given up hope of Donald Trump behaving presidentially, but I have hope that my Republican colleagues can behave congressionally. Even people who have confessed to crimes deserve a fair process, and we will continue to give the president that fairness while pursuing swift justice come hell or high water. The future of our democracy relies on us doing this together.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a former prosecutor, serves on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees and co-chairs the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Follow him on Twitter at @RepSwalwell

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Trump impeachment: House Republicans have a final chance to put the nation first - USA TODAY

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There are plenty of conservatives who don't particularly care for President Trump, but wouldn't call themselves NeverTrumpers. Yet they are reluctant to call out the president's daily political provocations because they see the growing allure of socialism among Democrats as a bigger threat to the country. This is a profound mistake that will backfire: If Trump's tyranny of ill intentions isn't defeated, the Democrats' tyranny of good intentions aka socialism may well become inevitable.

Socialism is a scary word in America, and Trump is doing everything in his power to wrap the term around the neck of Democrats before the next election. He attacked the socialist boogeyman in this year's State of the Union address after the resounding Republican mid-term loss. He excoriated Democrats for their "alarming" calls for socialism and declared "America will never be a socialist country."

Republicans took the message and ran with it. They launched an ad campaign against the "radical socialism" of "The Squad," the four minority congresswomen whose ring-leader is Green New Dealer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). They are warning voters that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist, will turn America not into Denmark but Venezuela if he gets anywhere near the White House. And they are accusing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of being a "dishonest socialist" who says she likes capitalism even as she would kill it.

Indeed, even the normally placid Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is now dramatically declaring that in 2020, Republicans will build a "firewall that saves the country from socialism."

If only!

In truth, Republicans may well deliver the country to "socialism" if they don't ditch Trump's America First ideology which is every bit as Big Government as socialism, but without any pretense of a higher purpose.

Socialism subordinates the interests of individuals in the name of a utopian egalitarianism, producing terrible results wherever tried. And yet it manages to seduce people because it purports to advance a just society. But America First dispenses with notions like justice. It has a zero-sum Hobbesian view of the world where one group's benefit is the other's loss. Socialists want to unite the world behind a problematic conception of the common good. But America First divides the world into us versus them, insiders versus outsiders and then uses the full power of the state to advance the interests of the former without much regard for fairness toward the latter. It's a fundamentally tribal approach to politics where (state) might makes right.

In foreign affairs, America First has meant not merely pursuing America's interests when dealing with other countries, but doing so without any regard for the interests of those other countries. Trump's willingness to withhold aid to Ukraine until it dug up dirt on his political opponents may be the most brazen example of this.

But the more morally troubling example is Trump's recent pardons of American soldiers accused of war crimes. One lieutenant he pardoned was serving 19 years for opening fire on unarmed Afghani villagers, killing two, and then calling in false reports. His own appalled troops turned him in.

The other case involves Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher who was accused of shooting Iraqi civilians, killing a captive Iraqi fighter with a knife, and then threatening to kill fellow SEALs if they reported him. He was convicted finally only of battlefield misconduct because he posed for a photo with the corpse of the Iraqi he was accused of killing. But America Firsters at Fox News decided that taking away Gallagher's elite status a gentle rap on the knuckles given the gravity of his actions would be intolerable "political correctness," prompting Trump to intervene on his behalf. He ordered military leaders to lay off Gallagher, leading to the resignation of the Navy secretary.

The message here is that it doesn't matter whether these guys are war criminals, they are "our" war criminals, and so there is no need to bring them to justice. At the same time that Trump is pardoning these Americans, he defends snatching babies from migrant moms as a deterrence measure and building detention camps for peaceful asylum seekers because they were born on the other side of the border.

Supporters of America First claim that its opposition to "endless war" is some kind of high-minded principle. But it matters whether this opposition stems from a concern for the world and its inhabitants or a contempt for them. And whether it sees contact and cooperation with the outside world as advancing America's well being or threatening its interests. America First is decisively in the latter camp on both counts.

It is no coincidence therefore that Trump is increasingly flirting with economic autarky or self-sufficiency, a time-honored tool of left wing dictators. This is reflected in Trump's bare-knuckles approach to trade policy. He doesn't want to straighten out the rules of the game to promote free trade for all. No, he wants "deals" where America's trading partners commit to buying prescribed amounts of American goods in order to close the trade deficit. Such demands have locked him in a bitter trade war with China, and have hit U.S. farmers, whom Trump has tried to placate through a government bailout two times bigger than President Obama's auto bailout.

Meanwhile, Trump's Buy American, Hire American directive awards government contracts not to the best bid but to the one that advances his own Make America Great Again agenda, regardless of the cost to taxpayers. But that does not necessarily make him a friend of domestic industry. He has targeted Big Tech companies with anti-trust investigations because he considers them his political opponents. He has viciously gone after Jeff Bezos and Amazon to retaliate against The Washington Post's critical coverage, even, it seems, denying Amazon a lucrative defense contract, signaling to Bezos that it will be costly for him to exercise his First Amendment rights.

Equally concerning is Trump's effort to constantly jawbone American companies that don't fall behind his America First agenda. He has repeatedly rebuked automakers, such as General Motors, that shutter their American operations or open plants overseas, because he wants to keep "American" jobs in America. And he showered Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn with massive government incentives to prod it to locate its manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin to create jobs (that haven't materialized).

In other words, Trump won't slap billionaires with confiscatory taxes or regulate them out of existence, as Bernie or Warren might do, but he'll happily use state power to make them do their patriotic duty. This is just as statist as the "socialists" conservatives fear.

But if the use of state power gets legitimized for narrow, self-serving reasons, it will become impossible to stop it from also being used for seemingly more lofty goals such as addressing income inequality or saving the planet. People certainly pursue their self-interest but they don't do so to the exclusion of every higher purpose, especially the young and idealistic. Republicans, at least since Ronald Reagan, had offered liberty as that higher purpose. But if conservatives don't push back against Trump's America First, they'll signal that all their pious talk about limited government and freedom was merely a ruse to protect majoritarian privilege. They won't have anything left to counter Democratic calls for socialism.

Indeed, when Ocasio-Cortez was queried about what she thinks of Trump's attacks on her Big Government socialism, she responded: "I find it hilarious, because this president seeks to expand government into the bodies of women. They seek to expand government to spontaneously generate detention centers all along our southern border So this is not about who's expanding government. It's about who we are working for, and we're choosing to work for the people of the United States."

One does not have to agree with her on a single issue to see that she has a point.

It is telling that even as the America First right increasingly employs the vocabulary of interest and abandons the vocabulary of rights to justify its slams on outsiders and opponents, the left is abandoning the vocabulary of interests and deploying the vocabulary of rights to push for freebies for everyone.

The latter may be detrimental for the country in a million different ways, but it is a much better positioning for winning the messaging war. It's perhaps not a coincidence then that since Trump assumed office, support for socialism has not only inched up by five points among Democrats but also seven points among independents. Trump may also have something to do with the fact that 7 out of 10 millennials polled last month said that they'd vote for a socialist.

In the long run, Trump's strongman tendencies and his use of the state's clenched fist to slam some for the alleged benefit of others risks making people more open to deploying the heavy hand of the state to supposedly lift everyone up.

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Republicans are leading the country to socialism - The Week

As the impeachment trial looms, we talk with Republicans about the risk and rewards of standing with Trump.

Lisa Desjardins, correspondent for PBS NewsHour. (@LisaDNews)

Seth Weathers, Republican political consultant and digital strategist. Founder of the political campaign agency Weatherscorp. Georgia state director for the 2016 Trump campaign. (@sethweathers)

Kim Alfano, Republican strategist and president and CEO of Alfano Communications. ()

On standing with President Trump, despite any revelations from the impeachment inquiry

Kim Alfano: "You didn't mention cutting regulations and creating jobs and, you know, boosting the economy. As much as I care what the phone call contained, I care more that my 401(k) is growing, because I have a child to put through college. ... You have to understand, Donald Trump is both theater and policy. And the policies, for the most part, especially domestically, have been very widely appreciated.

"I think that it's hard to parse the personality with the policy. For some of us that are out here, it's sometimes hard to ignore the brashness of our president. And we support him, and we support his policies, but, you know, personality-wise, not all the time. And I think that a lot can be done at the local level and in local races to drive home the success of the policies that are making our families better, that are making our lives freer and more prosperous. But we also have to do it in the shadow of a presidential campaign, which is going to be the reality TV part of it. So, we have to be clear about policies and priorities and the specifics of them, despite what the show might be playing that night."

"As much as I care what the phone call contained, I care more that my 401(k) is growing, because I have a child to put through college."

Seth Weathers: "I think what she's calling the show is the president is standing up strongly for the American people for a change. And I understand that it can be brash and off-putting to some people, but we've reached a time where that was needed. That's what the people wanted. They wanted someone that was willing to call BS, BS, and not run around in circles and give us political doublespeak. And I think that that's what Trump's given us. Are some of the tweets over the line, or something along that? Perhaps, at times.

"Anything Trump says gets blown out of context by the media. He referred to the impeachment as a 'lynching.' Well, then you had like two days of the media calling the president a racist. And how awful it was, how he was referring to black people being lynched in the south, and all kinds of nonsense. And then we go back to 1996, and you've got a slew of Democrats referring to the Clinton impeachment as a 'lynching.' It's an example of just over-blowing anything Trump does and says, and the media forms that into this terrible synopsis that the people can latch onto, watching the television or listening to a show. And so, I think, that when you have the media pushing one narrative, and they blindly ignore the other side, of the Democrats, for the same exact words, it blows everything out of proportion. And so it makes it into things that it's simply not."

We heard from Sheila, a Republican caller from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"Your guest panelist had mentioned that as long as her 401(k) was growing, then she was OK with what's happening in the country. I'm a Republican, which is a minority here in New Mexico. I'm a small business owner, and I believe in the Republican Party in regard to what it stands for. But what I don't believe in is that we're giving up on morals and ethics in replacement of self-benefit. And that's what concerns me right now, what's going on with our country.

"Trump,specifically, the way he acts and represents our country is not how I want to be represented as an American and as a Republican, because turning your back to morals and ethics and treating individuals poorly that is not representing who we are. And the fact that people are willing to overlook that for self-benefit, that concerns me for our country as a whole."

Here's how our panelists responded:

Alfano: "I don't disagree with you. And I think I I've said it before. The fact that the theater is happening is not my favorite thing. And, again, as a consultant, I would love to be able to talk to people in the party about policies that I think are helpful to families. And if I made it sound like, you know, it's all about my 401(k), I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is that it's important that our economy continues to grow, that small business owners like yourself, and my business is very small as well have the freedom and the ability to grow our companies and employ people. I mean, these are things that the Republican Party has stood for for years and years, pre-Trump, and now, and after Trump. My point is that the policies he's actually enacted have been helpful to our economy, and that is the bread and butter kind of issue that people can parse, and pull out, and say, 'Well, the country is doing well.' How that plays out in the presidential race? We'll find out."

Sheila, how are you doing financially in the time since President Trump has taken office?

"Financially, I would say the same, but morally and emotionally and just ethically, no. And that's the concern. I agree that we all need to provide for our families and look to our families to support them. But I don't want my children thinking, you know, as long as you're making a good buck, you're doing well in this country. I want them to have the morals and the leadership that represents who we want to be as a nation.

"Just how he treats women. I have teenage daughters. I don't like how he treats women, in regard to the comments. ... I'm also a veteran. And so I know chain of command. I can't respect him as a military person because of what he does with our military and bypassing. I'm also a former intelligence analyst. So the fact that he bypasses the intelligence community."

"I don't want my children thinking, you know, as long as you're making a good buck, you're doing well in this country. I want them to have the morals and the leadership that represents who we want to be as a nation."

Weathers interrupted Sheila at this point to explain that the president is the commander-in-chief, the top of the chain of command.Sheila clarified to explain her issue is with Trump's disregard of the intelligence community.

As for Trump's demeaning comments toward women ...

Weathers:"He says the same things about Rosie O'Donnell as he has, at some point, about Ted Cruz or anyone else who he's ever gone up against. And so I think he's very gender-neutral when it comes to who he goes after, after they go after him, who he responds to. He's also the guy that's appointed the first female head of the CIA, the first female campaign manager to win a presidency a long line of other female appointments that you haven't seen that are literally first in history."

CNN: "White House will not participate in Judiciary Committee hearing" "Neither President Donald Trump nor his attorneys will participate in Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, they said late Sunday.

"In a letter to Chairman Jerrold Nadler, White House counsel to the President Pat Cipollone said, 'We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings. More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the President with an semblance of a fair process. Accordingly, under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing.'

"Cipollone said they would respond separately to the Friday deadline about their participation in future hearings."

The Hill: "Top Judiciary Republican: 'My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff'" "Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the top GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is the most important witness Republicans want to question in the upcoming phase of the impeachment inquiry.

"'My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff,' Collins said on 'Fox News Sunday,' also noting that Schiff had 'compared himself in the past to a special counsel' and that then-special prosecutor Ken Starr testified during the GOP-controlled Houses impeachment of former President Clinton.

"'[Schiff] has put himself into that position,' Collins added. 'If he chooses not to [testify], then I really have to question his veracity in what hes putting in his report.'

"'Its easy to hide behind a report,' Collins said. 'But its going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.' "

The Hill: "Trump faces uphill 2020 climb" "President Trump is a slight underdog to win a second term with less than a year to go before the 2020 election.

"The president is saddled with low approval ratings nationally and weaknesses with key voting groups. Trumps approval ratings are mired in the low 40s, and he may remain the first president since modern polling began whose favorability number has never been above 50 percent in a Gallup poll.

"Trumps fiery and impulsive style appeals to members of his core Make America Great Again base, who continue to pack large arenas for his campaign rallies. But it costs him badly among other segments of the electorate."

See the article here:
Surveying The State Of The Republican Party | On Point - WBUR