What’s on your mind?
Your Open Thread conversation starter for the weekend is some polling on health care. This time, it’s polling of voter attitudes towards both parties in the health care debate. The polling is showing that the GOP is being seen as the party of no.
* A Democracy Corps survey conducted in early September finds 56 percent agreeing that Republicans are “More interested in partisan politics than solving the country’s problems.”
* The same poll finds just 29 percent saying that Republicans have “new ideas for addressing the country’s problems,” a lower rating than when we last asked this question in 2005.[8]
* Quinnipiac finds just 29 percent think that Republicans are “making a good faith effort to cooperate” with Obama on health care, versus 59 percent who say they are not.[9]
* A CBS/New York Times survey finds that just 27 percent think Republican members of Congress are opposing Obama’s plans because they think they are “bad for the country” while 64 percent say they are doing it for “political reasons.”[10]
* CNN finds that 61 percent say Republicans are “being obstructionist for mostly political reasons” versus 35 percent who say they are being “constructive.”[11]
* A Washington Post/ABC survey finds 62 percent saying Republicans in Congress are “not making a good faith effort to cooperate” on health care, versus just 31 percent who say they are.[12]
* Pew finds that 62 percent of opponents of health care reform think that “policymakers who oppose the current proposals” should compromise with supporters while only 33 percent think they should try to block passage of legislation. [13]
This is exactly what we warned Republicans about. It wasn’t just us liberals warned them, it was also people like GOP communications guru Frank Luntz. Republicans have become the party that only plays short term games and doesn’t have a plan for long term. Having no ideas on how to address issues facing the American people is not the road to electoral victory no matter how fired up the fringe is.