Shutdown Anger Aimed Mostly at GOP
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Matt McClain/ The Washington Post via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The political consequences of a government shutdown are bad, but there’s good evidence that it may be far worse for Republicans than for Democrats.
New polling out this week finds that Republicans are not winning either on their strategy or on the substance of the issue.
Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to shutting down the government in an attempt to block the implementation of the health care law — 72 percent of Americans oppose the strategy and only 22 percent support it, according to a new Quinnipiac Poll.
And they are basically split when it comes to how they feel about the law in general: 45 percent support the law and 47 percent oppose it.
Democrats, believing they have the political upper hand, are doing what they can to make the political pain stick for Republicans for as long as possible.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a robo-call ad campaign on Tuesday targeting 63 vulnerable Republicans for voting to “shut down the government” with Monday night’s votes.
And the Democratic National Committee said that the last 24 hours of this shutdown debacle gave them the best fundraising windfall they’ve had all cycle.
Republicans, on the other hand, have adopted a message that hammers Democrats for pushing an “unfair” health care law on the public.
“Democrats have slept through the ObamaCare alarm and the American people are paying the price,” said Andrea Bozek, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Rather than wake up to the dangers of ObamaCare, Democrats are hell-bent on forcing ObamaCare on everyone in America but themselves.”
When asked by Quinnipiac whether Republicans are doing enough to compromise with President Obama, 42 percent of Republicans say they are doing too little compared to 20 percent of Democrats who think Obama is doing too little to compromise.
Even when the question of funding for the government is taken out of the picture, voters say they don’t believe lawmakers should try to defund the law to stop it.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio