Wonkbook: The shutdown is a total disaster for the GOP

[Bill USA]

..is the public finally rousing itself from its apathetic torpor? ...Are people realizing that the shutdown, the threat of default, and the GOP's relentless internecine war on Governmnent is just the GOP's refinement of the old 'Burn Down the Reichstag building' maneuver of past enemies of democratic government?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/wonkbook-the-shutdown-is-a-total-disaster-for-the-gop/?wp_login_redirect=0

Thursday's Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll hit the Republican Party like a bomb.

It found, as Gallup had, the Republican Party (and, separately, the Tea Party) at "all-time lows in the history of the poll." It found Republicans taking more blame for the shutdown than they had in 1995. It found more Americans believing the shutdown is a serious problem than in 1995.

Even worse for the GOP is what the pollsters called "the Boomerang Effect": Both President Obama and Obamacare are more popular than they were a month ago. Obamacare in particular gained seven points. (More poll highlights here, full results here.)

It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the GOP's strategic failure here: Obamacare's launch has been awful. More than a week after the federal insurance marketplaces opened, most people can't purchase insurance on the first try. But Republicans have chosen such a wildly unpopular strategy to oppose it that they've helped both Obamacare and its author in the polls.
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[Warpy]

1. You can't tell people with no grip on reality

that they have no grip on reality. I just hope there are folks back home who aren't so bamboozled by their preachers that they haven't noticed that reality and Republicans have taken separate forks in the road and that it's been this way for some time. That's one of our main hopes.

The other is that the 2016 convention breaks down into a donnybook the likes of which haven't been seen since the Whigs fell apart in 1856 and the party is suddenly over, doomed to drool on in its dotage as a regional party with no power.

[DontTreadOnMe]

2. Ted Cruz has his own polls... they have nothing to worry about!

Talking heads should be making fun of this every day... "well MY polls says..."

[HooptieWagon]

3. Dear GOP, Please tell the Whigs we said hello. Yrs truly, Dems.

[BillyRibs]

4. I have to add this one.

Dear Tea Party,
Say Hello to the Liberty League will ya?

[blkmusclmachine]

5. We can only HOPE.