Sixty-seven percent of voters want House Republicans to coalesce behind a candidate so the House can quickly elect a Speaker, while about a quarter of respondents said they are indifferent about whether a speaker is elected, a recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll found.
While the speakership position has been vacant for almost three weeks, 57 percent of Republicans want a Speaker elected as soon as possible, and 34 percent of Republicans are indifferent. For Democrats, those numbers are 86 percent and 10 percent respectively, and 59 percent to 32 percent for independents.
“It’s not like they do anything anyways,” Dustin Gibbons, 34, a home warranty manager in Arizona told USA Today. “I don’t think that a speaker in the House is going to do anything other than, you know, just keep kicking that ball along.”
The Republican conference will meet on Monday evening for a candidate forum. Reports suggest the conference will vote on a nominee Tuesday morning before a vote on the House floor takes place to officially elect a speaker.
Whenever the House elects a speaker, voters appear to want a compromise on federal spending before the government runs out of taxpayer funds on November 17. Sixty-one percent want politicians to reach a deal. Among the 31 percent who want to reduce federal spending, 55 percent of those are Republicans. Just 37 percent of Republican respondents want a compromise.
“I mean, don’t we live in a bipartisan world?” Desiree Whitney, 64, of Boerne, Texas, told USA Today. “Why should it stop, you know at our government, or does it begin there? I mean, it’s all about negotiations.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) exclusively told Breitbart News the Appropriations Committee can continue to draft legislation in preparation for restored order in the House, echoing the belief of several other members.
“I think the important thing for people to know is regardless of this speaker battle that we’re having, committees can keep doing their work and they should; they shouldn’t stop,” she said.
The poll sampled 1,000 voters from October 17-20 with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
