All day long I’ve been seeing headlines like the one discussed in the last post, about how support is crumbling away from President Obama. Then I see this:
Most Americans would like to see a mix of spending cuts and tax increases be part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, a new poll finds, aligning the majority with President Barack Obama’s position.
Of those surveyed for a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday, 56 percent said they want to see a mix of approaches used in an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The poll was conducted overnight Monday, as Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voiced their views on the impasse in negotiations in back-to-back televised primetime speeches….
… Just 19 percent of Americans said they favor a plan like Boehner’s, which would rely solely on spending cuts to existing programs to reduce the deficit. Twelve percent said they would prefer a plan to reduce the deficit only by raising taxes.
This says to me that the American people aren’t following the script. It also tells me the President’s political strategy may be a lot smarter than the political gasbags think it is.
Much of the “progressive” Left denounced Obama’s speech last night. Anti-Obama groupthink has so taken over the Left that a person is not allowed even to explain Obama’s position even if he disagrees with it.
But if you read the fine print — meaning go past the headline and look at the data, as I did in the last post — what you see is that Obama’s support really is not shifting much. It’s the GOP’s foundation that’s slipping away.
Now, I disagree with most of the cuts in programs that the President has put on the table over the past several weeks. But by it now should be obvious even to a firebagger that these offers were more about politics — let’s call it “bagger baiting” — than negotiations. And the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that the President and his political team are reading the public a lot better than most of the punditocracy and blogosphere.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that the congressional GOP is in meltdown. John Boehner’s plan was rejected by his own party. Sometime today marathon whiner Eric Cantor told House Republicans to stop whining. A bunch of them are still holding out for a balanced budget amendment. Pathetic.
Josh Marshall hints that we may yet be saved by a deus ex machina in the form of Wall Street financial interests. We’ll see.
Updates:
Greg Sargent, “Americans to Congress: Please hike our taxes before you cut entitlements” and “Dems plot the endgame in debt limit fight.”
See also: “CBO: John Boehner’s debt bill comes up short“