We must be doing something right:
Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next year’s elections could be stark, according to the the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 7-11. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 – the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids – the most in any election since 1948.
The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. A record-high 50% say that the current Congress has accomplished less than other recent Congresses, and by nearly two-to-one (40% to 23%) more blame Republican leaders than Democratic leaders for this. By wide margins, the GOP is seen as the party that is more extreme in its positions, less willing to work with the other side to get things done, and less honest and ethical in the way it governs. And for the first time in over two years, the Democratic Party has gained the edge as the party better able to manage the federal government.
The 23% who blame the Democrats more for congressional inaction? Those are same graniteheads who still supported Bush at the end of his presidency. Most of them are probably glued to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News around the clock.
I’d say that the electorate has been sufficiently conditioned and educated. A government shutdown right now (provided we can’t get a fair deal) will hit a public already predisposed to blame Republicans, and to hate them for it.
