Wednesday Open Thread [9.25.13]

What a juxtaposition. Here is Calgary Texas Senator Speaker Strom Thurmond Joe McCarthy Ted Cruz’s hometown newspaper today.

The self promoter named Cruz should be getting the hook just about noon. If he refuses to yield the floor, he will be arrested and dragged out of the chamber by the Sargent at Arms.

Republicans keep spinning and hoping that a government shutdown won’t be blamed on them. They will fail:

Republicans are the ones who hate government, and Democrats are the ones who defend it.

This is the heart of it. After so many decades of Republicans saying that government is evil, trying to slash it in a hundred ways, and more recently saying that they don’t think a shutdown would be all that bad, it will be all but impossible for them to convince people that they’re the ones who want government to stay open. Even if it were true (which it isn’t) they wouldn’t be able to convince people of it.

They’re the anti-government party. That’s who they are. They worked very hard to create that image. So the universal default assumption is that when there’s a question of who’s responsible for shutting down the government, Republicans are the ones who are doing it, and persuading people that the opposite is true just isn’t going to happen.

A new CNBC poll finds that a plurality oppose defunding Obamacare and a majority oppose shutting down the government to do so. Ed Morrissey has more:

[W]hile a majority of Republicans support defunding (51/36), a near-majority oppose a government shutdown over the issue (36/48 for shutdown). Independents break even more harshly against both, narrowly opposing defunding (40/44) but coming out almost 5:1 against a government shutdown, 14/65. In fact, the only demographic that favors this strategy, according to CNBC, is the Tea Party demo, which supports a shutdown strategy with a 54% majority.

And now some more polling goodness:

INDIANA–MARRIAGE EQUALITY–Bellwether Research: 48% of voters are opposed to the amendment to the state constitution which would ban same sex marriage while 45% support it. If we are winning this fight in Indiana, then the war is truly over. Hey bigots. We won. Suck it.

VIRGINIA–GOVERNOR–NBC News/Marist: Terry McAuliffe (D) 43, Ken Cuccinelli (R) 38

VIRGINIA–GOVERNOR–Washington Post: McAuliffe 47, Cuccinelli 39

The same Post poll also shows Democrats narrowly ahead in the races for Lt. Governor and Attorney General. Recall that the Lt. Governor features the particularly odious and unAmerican teabagger Pastor E.W. Jackson.

NEW JERSEY–US SENATE–Stockton Polling Institute Cory Booker (D) 58, Steve Lonegan (R) 32

NEW JERSEY–US SENATE–Quinnipiac: Booker 53, Lonegan 41

WEST VIRGINIA–US SENATE–Public Policy Polling: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) 50, Sec. of State Natalie Tennant (D) 36.

MASSACHUSETTS–GOVERNOR–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Public Policy Polling: Martha Coakley (D) 57, Steve Grossman 10, Don Berwick 6%

MASSACHUSETTS–GOVERNOR–Public Policy Polling: Coakley 51, Charlie Baker (R) 38