Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are now viewed as ineffective and unpopular by such a wide swath of the American electorate that they poll somewhere below the left-wing extremist group Antifa.

A recent survey taken by McLaughlin & Associates in conjunction with the Center for Security Policy and the Eagle Forum, released Thursday, revealed that nearly two-thirds of voters believe that the time has come for new leadership in Congress.

A paltry 15 percent of those polled said “no” when asked if it is “time for new Republican leadership in Congress, which would mean replacing Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan.” Nearly a quarter of respondents, 22 percent, were uncertain. A whopping 63 percent supported the notion of dumping the pair of GOP leaders.

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But while only 15 percent of Americans appear to retain confidence in McConnell and Ryan, 21 percent of those McLaughlin polled said they supported Antifa.

One conservative activist said GOP leaders in Congress can repair their numbers by beginning to make successful progress on the agenda of President Donald Trump.

“While Antifa has nowhere to go but down, as political violence is unacceptable in modern American society, the good news for Ryan and McConnell is that they have a pathway ahead,” said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government.

Manning continued: “And that is by enacting the Trump agenda they ran on: repealing Obamacare, reining in big government, cutting taxes, and building the wall that was promised to be delivered with Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.”

The road to popularity is steep — especially for McConnell. A Harvard-Harris poll released late August revealed that McConnell had the lowest favorability rating of any high-profile American politician at the time, at only 19 percent, while a Public Policy Polling survey released the same week showed McConnell with only an 18 percent job approval rating in his home state of Kentucky.

“Obviously Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aren’t comparable to Antifa. Ideally, Antifa should be at 0 percent approval,” Eddie Zipperer, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College, told LifeZette. “We should be very concerned about the leftists who tolerate hate as long it hates in the same direction as them. Having said that, if you lack the political acumen to score Antifa-level popularity numbers, it might be time to step aside or at least take a serious look at your tactics.”

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“McConnell and Ryan would rather be loved and admired by the media than by the people who elected them,” he explained. “It’s like they’re the leaders of some weird cult of self-loathing conservatism. They use Democratic talking points to attack Trump, they play into anti-Trump media narratives, and they are clearly incapable of creating the sort of party unity that we always see from the Democrats.”

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“They want to take the Republican Party and the reins of government away from Trump. They think he’d make a great puppet for them,” Zipperer continued, echoing comments made by Steve Bannon during a recent “60 Minutes” interview. “The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election. That’s a brutal fact we have to face.”

“The problem is, playing to the Left and the tiny Never-Trump minority of the Republican Party is a losing strategy in national politics,” he said. “That’s why McCain got blown out in 2008. That’s why Romney got blown out in 2012. What they’ve accomplished by rejecting Trump is to alienate most Republicans.”

“Obviously,” added Zipperer, “Democrats are eager to see them fail, so they won’t win hearts and minds on that side. So what they’re left with is that tiny group of people who thought Jeb Bush or John Kasich would have made a great nominee in 2016. Those people are not enough to sustain anyone at the national level.”

(photo credit, homepage image: Gage Skidmore/C64-92, Flickr; photo credit, article image: Ben Schumin, Wikimedia)