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Congress, as you know, is unpopular.

The countrys legislative body has done a lot to foster that attitude, of course, with cynical hypocrisies and partisan nonsense. Some of our attitudes toward Congress are steeped in tradition; like airline food, Congress is something that were just supposed to dislike.

But something interesting happened recently, according to new polling from CNN and its pollster, ORC. Congressional leaders the faces of Congress that people are more likely to know beyond their own senators and representative are slightly more popular than they used to be. Or, at least, Republican ones are.

Job-approval ratings for Democratic congressional leaders have generally been higher than Republican ones since the dawn of the Obama era. This is in part simply because Democrats generally have a more positive inclination toward government, certainly, but its also because having a Democratic president offered them a boost.

Notice what happened to opinions of Democratic leaders as Barack Obama campaigned for and won the presidency. The approval honeymoon didnt last for Obama or his colleagues on Capitol Hill but it helped.

More recently, opinions of Democratic leaders have been fairly flat at least during the points at which CNN-ORC polled.

Compare that with attitudes on Republican leaders.

The new number is fascinating in part because of how dramatically the Republicans fortunes shifted over the past year or so. Twelve months ago, the party appeared to be on the verge of splintering, forced apart by the apparently doomed candidacy of Donald Trump, whose nomination might rend the GOP into two dissimilar factions. Republican leaders who opposed Trump appeared to be poised to be at distance from the partys Trump-enthusiastic base.

But winning is a wonderful political salve. The sudden uptick in approval for Republican leaders on the Hill is strongly linked to improved opinions from within the Republican Party. In fact, since 2008, attitudes about Republican leaders from Republicans have never been anywhere near where they were in CNN-ORCs new poll.

Opinions of Democratic leaders among Democrats, meanwhile, are at a low.

Notice in that second graph that Republican leaders, too, benefited from the onset of the Obama era, which appeared to be poised to bring about a new comity in politics for about a day. This is the lesson that Republican leaders should probably heed. Approval of the job theyre doing is at a new high. It very well could be at a high-water mark, and they may have nowhere to go but down.

See more here:
Republicans have finally fallen in love with their leaders in Congress - Washington Post