Yesterday, Nielson Brothers Polling announced its finding that South Dakotans are pretty evenly split in blaming the Republicans and the Democrats for the partial federal government shutdown. Not so with a national sample:
The Republican Party has been badly damaged in the ongoing government shutdown and debt limit standoff, with a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finding that a majority of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown, and with the party’s popularity declining to its lowest level.
By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96 [Mark Murray, "NBC/WSJ Poll: Shutdown Debate Damages GOP," NBCNews.com, 2013.10.10].
Laying blame doesn't usually get us anywhere. But in this case, when Republicans are speaking so absurdly that I begin to doubt the possibility of rational negotiation and legislation, laying blame and tying votes to it may be the only way to force Republicans to put down the gun, release the hostages, and uphold the laws and Constitutional lawmaking processes they've sworn to uphold.
And one year until next fall’s midterm elections, American voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress to a Republican-controlled one by eight percentage points (47 percent to 39 percent), up from the Democrats’ three-point advantage last month (46 percent to 43 percent) [Murray, 2013.10.10].
If the the nation's full faith and credit weren't at stake, I'd say Republicans, keep driving yourselves right into electoral collapse.