Since it has become more than obvious that nothing of any importance is going to come out of the Republican-controlled Congress, President Obama has decided to step up and act on his own as much as possible. The president touched on a couple of his executive actions in his State of the Union speech -- his exemption of the families of immigrant "Dreamers" from deportation, and his initiating the restoration of normal relations with Cuba.
Republicans blew their tops when those actions were taken (and pointedly refused to clap when they were mentioned in the SOTU speech), and have said they would try to overturn both. They would be making a mistake to do that. Of course making mistakes seems to be their forte these days.
I say that because a majority of the public likes the president's actions. They wish they could have been accomplished in conjunction with Congress, but they don't want them overturned. As the charts above show, 52% of Americans support the immigration action and 60% support restoring normal relations with Cuba. Opposing these actions is just going to further alienate Republicans from what the public wants.
It is interesting how much attitudes have changed in the last quarter century. Back in 1978, normalizing relations with Cuba couldn't have been done. Only 31% of the public would have supported it than (see chart below).
All of these charts are from the new NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll that was done between January 14th and 17th of a random national sample of 800 adults, with a margin of error of 3.46 points.
