In the aftermath of the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which an armed gunman attempted to breach, countless Republicans — from the White House to the halls of Capitol Hill, from the Justice Department to every available media platform — cried out in unison, shouting one word to anyone who would listen: “ballroom.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham even led a group of White House loyalists in demanding American taxpayers pick up the tab for the president’s legally dubious vanity project, despite Donald Trump’s promises about private financing. The South Carolinian went so far as to suggest that his proposal would enjoy broad support.
“I want a vote,” Graham told reporters on Monday. “I want to see, where is America on this? I’ll bet you 90% of the people would love to have a better facility than the Hilton hotel to make sure this crap never happens again.”
The senator appeared to be overestimating public appetite on the subject, and by a wide margin. The Washington Post reported:
Americans reject President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, and they appear largely unmoved by the intensified calls from the president and his allies in Congress to allow the project to go forward.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing to make way for his planned ballroom, funded by about $400 million in private donations, while 28 percent support the project. That is the same division found in an October poll. … There is also a notable enthusiasm gap: Nearly three times as many people “strongly” oppose the project as strongly support it, the poll found.
Note that the poll specifically asked respondents about a ballroom financed by “private donations from U.S. businesses and individuals.” It’s likely Graham’s proposal for a taxpayer–funded project would generate even broader opposition.
There were some questions about whether Saturday night’s developments would alter public attitudes, the way they affected GOP politicians and their sudden obsession with the project. But that wasn’t the case: The result of the latest Post-ABC-Ipsos survey, which overlapped with the incident at the correspondents’ dinner, were effectively identical to the same poll conducted in October.
The ballroom project, in other words, isn’t just wildly unnecessary, it also remains quite unpopular.
To be sure, Trump, Graham, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and their partisan allies will probably keep championing the project anyway, and with the midterm elections roughly six months away, it’s likely that Democrats hope they do. But to the extent Republicans care about voters’ wishes, the American mainstream is looking for a lot of things from policymakers. A White House ballroom isn’t one of them.
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