There was some interesting reading in Frank Rich's newest column that detailed public opinion in some initiatives and in particular made me question the political intelligence of some current GOP positions. Conventional wisdom on the right is that President Obama over reached with "health-care" or the "stimulus" or "government spending" in general and that has led to the recent success of the GOP. Here are some interesting facts that detail a different story:
But in 2011, it’s not just the revelation of cuts to specific popular programs that threatens to turn Americans against the Republican Congress. New polls show that Americans don’t even buy the principles behind these specifics. To hear the G.O.P. wail about it, you’d think the entire country was obsessed with the federal debt — cited 12 times in Ryan’s under-11-minute speech. But only 18 percent of Americans chose the deficit as a top priority for Washington in the most recent NBC/Journal survey and only 14 percent did in the New York Times/CBS News poll. Job creation was by far the top choice — at 43 percent (Times/CBS) and 34 percent (NBC/Journal).I do think the Republicans can gain some traction with the deficit and budget, but when they start trying to defund the health-care bill they better be prepared for the onslaught because the main part that they have control over will be the funds for expanding Medicaid to poor people. And also, expect criticism over cuts to Medicare and Social Security, although they won't propose any, because of the general hawkishness of the GOP on the budget right now. First and foremost, if the GOP decides to "shut down" the government by not lifting the debt ceiling they, like Gingrich, will lose that fight. Ultimately, I feel like they posture and then raise the ceiling, but this will be a test of how far the "Tea Party" people have pulled the GOP to the right.
Health care was a low-ranked priority too in those polls. And for all the right’s apocalyptic rants about the national horror of “Obamacare,” most polls continue to show that Americans are evenly divided about the law and that only a small minority favors its complete repeal (only one in four Americans in the latest Associated Press/GfK survey). The surest indicator that voters are not as inflamed about either the deficit or “Obamacare” as the right keeps claiming can be found in Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal musings. To argue that Americans share his two obsessions, Rove now is reduced to citing polls from either Fox or a Brand X called Resurgent Republic, which he helpfully identifies as “a group I helped form.”
