US politicians are some of the least popular people around. Congress has about a 9% positive rating. @ppppolls says their polling tells them even cockroaches are rated more highly than Congress.
Some congressmen are more popular than other – and obviously, some are less popular. A self-proclaimed “Tea Party incumbent,” has a generated a growing list of enemies within his own party, according to a report in Politico last Thursday.
According to the Politico report, a Michigan republican, Rep. Justin Amash will not win the “most popular politician trophy” from his own colleagues in the House.
Rep. Amash has multiple financial backers, including the Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth, but he is facing a tough primary to retain his seat.
Amash’s opponent is financial advisor Brian Ellis, who receives support from the fund-raising arms of Home Depot and Dow Chemical.
Among the political enemies Amash has created is another republican Michigan Rep., Mike Rogers, who is set to retire at the end of his current term. Rogers handed Ellis a $5,000 check, and he told Politico that Amash “votes more with the Democrats than with the Republicans.”
Club for Growth recently commissioned a poll that showed Amash has a comfortable lead over Ellis, but moderates in the Republican establishment have been buoyed by recent primary wins elsewhere. The Republican leadership judges Amash a “liability and unfaithful to his tea party branding,” according to the report in Politico.
Ellis has a campaign ad that paints Amash as a democrat in his voting. It says, “Justin Amash talks conservative, but he voted against the Balanced Budget Amendment, against the ban on gender selection abortions and with President Obama 51 percent of the time.”
Amash has upset establishment Republicans since he has vocally criticized the National Security Agency’s (NSA) data-collection practices, which they support. This is the reason the establishment wants him out of the way.
Amash says Ellis is a typical establishment republican, who is “running on more corporate welfare, unconstitutional spying and support for Common Core.”
As this primary runs down, things could get rough.
