The Deep State Outs Itself In Shocking Poll
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/17/the-deep-state-outs-itself-in-shocking-poll/
Remember back at the start of President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when the pundit class was telling us that the Deep State was all a figment of his paranoid imagination? The subsequent eight years of the Russia hoax, bogus impeachments, and lawfare should have been proof enough that it is real.
Now, as Trump is about to begin his second term, a new poll shows just how deeply embedded the Deep State is, and why it has to be dismantled.
In 2017, headlines like the following were everywhere:
- “There Is No Deep State” – New York Magazine
- “What Happens When You Fight A ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist” – The New York Times
- “Trump Embraces Deep State Conspiracy Theory” – CNN
- “The Deep State Is A Figment Of Steve Bannon’s Imagination” – Politico
- “Deep State: Inside Donald Trump’s Paranoid Conspiracy Theory” – Rolling Stone
- “How Trump’s Paranoid White House Sees ‘Deep State’ Enemies On All Sides” – The Guardian
Never-Trumpers such as Kevin Williamson dismissed it as well, writing in National Review that “Giving the figments of your imagination a name and an involved back-story doesn’t make them real. It just makes you nuts.”
What’s nuts is denying the obvious – that Washington is overflowing with people who want to thwart conservative reforms either to cling to power, preserve their status quo perks, or are just ideologically opposed to a limited government.
The problem is that legions of these people hold positions of responsibility inside the federal government and have for decades undermined conservative policies.
Journalist M. Stanton Evans wrote extensively in the 1980s about how the federal bureaucracy actively thwarted Ronald Reagan’s agenda, describing it as an organism that will attack conservatives the way antibodies attack a virus. Since then, the Deep State has only grown deeper and more resilient.
Just how resilient was made clear in a survey by RMG Research released this week that looked at the views of 500 federal government managers, and compared them to the registered voters nationwide and the “elite 1%.”
What it found was shocking: 42% of federal government managers – the very people best able to hobble Trump’s agenda – say they plan to “resist” the new administration, with nearly a quarter of them (23%) saying they will “strongly resist.”
That compares with just 29% of registered voters who say they will “ focus their political energies on resisting the incoming administration.”
The survey also found that of those federal government managers who voted for Kamala Harris, “just 1% are even willing to Somewhat Support the new Administration. Fully 80% are committed to resisting the team elected by the American people.”
The survey also showcases how hopelessly out of touch bureaucrats are with the people they allegedly serve. When asked an open-ended question about the biggest issue facing the country, 40% of Main Street Americans named the economy. In contrast, just 18% of government managers did. Fewer than half of federal managers thought illegal immigration was bad, compared with 72% of the general public.
And while 11% of federal managers listed either “climate change” or “equality” as top issues, none of the Main Street Americans did.
But, interestingly enough, the views of federal government managers are closely aligned with the elite 1%.
“These results give voters legitimate reasons to suspect the existence of a Deep State pursuing its own agenda rather than implementing the agenda selected by voters,” the survey’s authors conclude.
They’ve got that right.
The survey also underscores why Trump is right to want to be able to fire more of these recalcitrant federal bureaucrats. The nation voted for Trump. They approved of the policies he wants to enact. They put Republicans in charge of Congress.
Unelected, pasty-faced, leftist bureaucrats operating out of windowless offices in dreary federal buildings should not be in a position to thwart the will of the people.
That would be, to quote Joe Biden, “a serious threat to democracy.”
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