http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/gop_public_support_drops_like031331.phpCongress wasn’t popular when Republicans shut down the government in the mid-90s. It wasn’t popular when Republicans impeached President Clinton. It wasn’t popular when the economy crashed in 2008.
But it hasn’t been this unpopular in my lifetime.
The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after another political stalemate led to a shutdown of the federal government in 1995.
The poll, conducted after the debt-ceiling agreement was signed into law, shows that the deal hasn’t gone over well with the public, and voters blame Republicans for the fiasco. Asked, “Who do you blame more for the difficulties in reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling?” a 47% plurality pointed the finger at the GOP, while 29% blamed the president and congressional Democrats.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-incredible-shrinking-tea-party/2011/03/03/gIQAJkxewI_blog.html?hpid=z3Posted at 01:37 PM ET, 08/05/2011
The Incredible Shrinking Tea Party
By Greg Sargent
If there’s one thing the debt ceiling battle revealed, it’s that the Tea Party continues to enjoy outsized influence in Washington in general and over the GOP in particular.
So it’s interesting to note that according to the internals of today’s New York Times poll, the Tea Party is rapidly shrinking before our very eyes, and is hemorraging supporters at a surprising rate:
Do you consider yourself to be a supporter of the Tea Party movement, or not?
Yes 18
No 73
The 18 percent who self-identify as Tea Party supporters is at its lowest point, tying the 18 percent who supported it way back in April of 2010, when it was first gaining steam as the Congressional races of last cycle began heating up. The trajectory is interesting: The Times poll shows the Tea Party has had some ups and downs, but it steadily gained supporters as the 2010 campaigns wore on, and peaked with 31 percent of the electorate saying they supported the movement at around the time that the GOP won its massive 2010 victory.
Then its support began to decline, and it then dropped a precipitous eight points from June until today — a period that roughly coincided with the debt ceiling debate, which showcased Tea Party intransigence and self-delusion at its finest. Not only that, but right now, the 73 percent who say they are not supporters is at its highest point ever.
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