| Despite their belief that Obama is trying to work with the Republicans, and even stronger belief that the Republicans are not negotiating in good faith (62%), still we find that the plurality blames "both sides equally." This is a large part of why the Republicans behave so poorly in these debates, they know that most of the public will just be disgusted with both parties. If the teacher is going to send both kids to the Principal's office anyway, you may as well fight dirty.
As CQ Politics puts it:
But if there is any political blowback from this, it's hard to find. People were evenly divided on whether they would vote for (22 percent) or against (23 percent) a congressional candidate who supports the Democrats' health overhaul plan, with 54 percent saying it would make no difference to them. Forty-nine percent said they think the two parties are equally to blame for the tone of the debate.
And the result in this poll are not some new revelation to the public as a result of Obama's speech or something, back in July, a CBS News/NY Times poll found:
The public was fully aware in July that the Republicans are not on the level about this, even before the Summer of Shove's town hall absurdity, and yet through all that time, support for health reform, Democrats and Obama declined. People like bipartisanship because most people are not ideological or particularly partisan, and believe that most political problems can be solved by "common sense" (hence amusing commercials like this). Conflict and shouting is just damned unpleasant. Even as they know intellectually that the Republican party is obstinately against health care reform, they still intuit that reason and logic should ultimately win out, and that squabbling politicians can be made to "see sense." After all, in most daily life, that tends to be true. People are unreasonable at times, but usually their friends can bring them around. It's natural that your everday experience would colour your expectations of politicians, and thus a presumption of core rationality and common goals in improving society is quite normal.
The fight against pointless efforts at bipartisanship is really a fight to advertise the implacability of movement conservativism. They simply don't believe in democracy, don't care that millions and millions of people are suffering under an immoral health care system, and thus can't be moved. It is a zero-sum power struggle for them, as they have absolutely no interest in solving problems for the public through any means at any cost to them in that power calculus.
Fortunately at least, while there is evidently no margin in attempted bipartisanship, there's also little risk in abandoning it. |
