'There's gonna be political costs': GOP insiders warn of 'mounting frustration' with Musk
It’s not all sunshine and roses for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) among Republican voters, The Hill reports.
“Republicans are facing mounting voter frustration with Trump administration cuts” spearheaded by the tech billionaire, The Hill’s Julia Mueller writes.
GOP strategist Alex Conant, who served as Marco Rubio’s communication director in 2016, told the Hill voters “haven’t necessarily heard about the benefits” of DOGE, warning “there’s gonna be political costs” if the department slashes services Republicans support.
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“What Republicans should be concerned about is Musk’s effectiveness,” Conant said. “If DOGE actually breaks things that people care about and rely on, there’s gonna be political costs to that.”
Republican strategist Doug Heye warned the department’s efforts to slash jobs throughout the federal government will eventually show in “real job losses.”
“There’s gonna be real job losses that we’re not measuring yet, but we’re going to in the coming weeks and months,” Heye told Mueller.
Heye added the losses will have an “an impact, especially in specific communities,” and could make “life harder for the reliable voter, typically, for Trump.”
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“That kind of slow burn, I think, could have an impact,” Heye added.
University of Delaware political science professor Dannagal Young said with the GOP’s near-total control of the government, “what really matters is what is going on in Republican districts with Republican voters who have Republican lawmakers who are representing them.”
Young said the trust Republicans have in Trump isn’t necessarily translating to Musk — despite the billionaire being “aligned with the Trump agenda.”
“The trust in Musk, in DOGE, while still higher among Republicans, is not ginormous,” Young noted.
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“I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear what it is that Republican lawmakers are saying internally about these pressures and what fears they may have about their own re-election prospects as a result,” Young said.
“I think that the more that Republican lawmakers are hearing from angry constituents, and the more that they become aware that these angry constituents are, in fact, Republicans who maybe voted for them just a couple months ago, I think that there’s going to be perhaps intra-party conversation about the extent to which Musk has been given the keys to the castle, and how their constituents don’t love that,” he added.
Read the full report at the Hill.
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