More troubles for the GOP as it tries to pivot from the House shutdown and debt default threat political debacle: a new poll finds more that half believe it’s not good that the Republicans control the House amid yet another Democratic poll that finds an increasingly large number of House Republicans are politically vulnerable.
The CNN/ORC International survey illustrates why Republicans have been so quick to try and move from talking about the disastrous government shutdown to talking about the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, and why Florida Sen. Marco Rubio who only a month or two ago seemed to be supporting a government shutdown is now insisting he did no such thing:
Just more than half the public says that it’s bad for the country that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, according to a new national poll conducted after the end of the partial government shutdown.
And the CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that more than six in 10 Americans say that Speaker of the House John Boehner should be replaced.
The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, just after the end of the 16-day partial federal government shutdown that was caused in part by a push by House conservatives to try and dismantle the health care law, which is President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
According to the survey, 54% say it’s a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, up 11 points from last December, soon after the 2012 elections when the Republicans kept control of the chamber. Only 38% say it’s a good thing the GOP controls the House, a 13-point dive from the end of last year.
Defeated GOP wants to unite and fight another day.
This is the first time since the Republicans won back control of the House in the 2010 elections that a majority say their control of the chamber is bad for the country.
And yet another Democratic poll is finding House Republicans increasingly vulnerable, despite gerrymandering — but there are some cautionary notes:
A new survey of 25 GOP-held districts shows dwindling favorability for Republican members of the House in the wake of the recent government shutdown.
The survey, conducted by liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling and funded by MoveOn.org, is the third in a series of polls that indicate Democrats have a shot at taking back the House of Representatives in the 2014 election cycle.
The results of the latest survey show that incumbent Republicans in 15 of the 25 districts polled trail generic Democratic candidates. When combined with the results of the previous surveys, the polls show that generic Democratic candidates lead in 37 of 61 GOP-held districts.
When voters were informed their Republican candidate supported the government shutdown, 11 more districts flipped and one race became a tie.
Democrats in the House only need to see a net increase of 17 seats in order to take back the majority. This poll indicates that Democrats could see an increase of as many as 49 seats.
Public Policy Polling indicated several caveats to the results. The surveys were conducted during a high-profile budget crisis debate, a year before the elections will take place. And incumbent Republican candidates were compared to “generic Democrats,” who may not represent the actual candidates each district will see.
Could there be another government shutdown? To hear Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and other Tea Party Republicans and some members of the conservative entertainment media, yes, it could happen. But Majority Leader Harry Reid notes that if GOPers do it again then they do risk losing the House:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in an interview aired Sunday that Republicans would be at risk of losing their majority in the House if the government were to shut down again in January.
Reid told the Spanish-language network Univision that he believes Republicans will not use the same tactics that led to the most recent 16-day shutdown — attempting to defund Obamacare by withholding funding for the entire government — because the political costs would be too great.
“I don’t blame the American people for being upset. What we have here in America today is a crisis created for no reason, other than to satisfy the shrill right-wing Tea Party. … And I would hope that this crisis as some Republican members of Congress have said, you can look at Roy Blunt, a Republican of Missouri, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina. I’m paraphrasing, but they said this was a terrible waste of resources,” Reid said of the shutdown that could cost the economy $24 billion. ”All it did is hurt Republicans. … I hope they’ve learned a lesson. The American people will not put up with that. And if this happens again, I don’t think it will, but if it does, I think the House of Representatives will go Democratic.”
“There was so much pushback against this silly, stupid thing they were trying to do,” Reid said, of the House GOP’s repeated attempts to repeal Obamacare even before the shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also has said another shutdown in January — when the most recent continuing resolution expires — is unlikely. McConnell and Reid were the key figures in negotiating the deal that reopened the government and raised the debt limit through February.
Though many Democrats and some Republicans have offered a similar theory, Reid was the most blunt to date about one of the GOP’s greatest political fears: a second turn at the helm as speaker for Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“I believe the polls that show 18 [House] Republicans … if the vote were today they would lose. So they, I hope they’ve learned their lesson. If they haven’t, they really aren’t thinking too well,” the majority leader said. Democrats currently hold 200 seats in the House, and 218 is needed to assume the majority.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.