If you are wary of politicians telling you how you should feel about Obamacare and the government shutdown, you are not alone. Republicans in Washington are losing the conversation, and their infighting may signal the death knell if they don’t show some solidarity and move past this most recent debacle toward a more tenable resolution, something more tenable than shutting down the government and defunding a law that’s already on the books.
Happily, as I never tire of pointing out, merely making an assertion doesn’t make said claim true:
In the first hours of the shutdown, the terrain looks very bad for Republicans. It’s amazing how consistent the polls have been about linking a confrontation over the Affordable Care Act to funding of the government. While polls show the public disapproves of the law, it has consistently told pollsters it is not in favor of tying government operations to defunding the health care plan. In addition to theQuinnipiac poll, the polls from CBS, CNN, CNBC, National Journal, and Kaiser show this. As GOP Sen. Jeff Flake said, Republicans have found the one gambit less popular than Obamacare.
Conservatives would interrupt the conversation here. They didn’t shut the government down over Obamacare—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shut the government down because he refused to negotiate. This is true; Reid refused to negotiate. But the American public would have to view this confrontation differently for that fact to give the Republicans any leverage. Right now, the public agrees with Democrats: Funding the government and taking apart Obamacare should not be part of the same conversation. How do Republicans change that dynamic? Asserting that Obamacare is not popular hasn’t made a whit of difference. — “Why the Shutdown Looks So Bad for the GOP,” Slate, Oct. 1, 2013