Last week the Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted along party lines to include a complete defunding of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in the continuing resolution to fund the federal government until the end of this year. Now that bill is in the hands of the Senate.There were threats by some senators (led by Ted Cruz of Texas) to filibuster the bill, but it now looks like Majority Leader Harry Reid may have the votes to prevent that, and to strip the defunding of Obamacare from the budget bill. We won't know for a couple more days, but if that is what does happen, then the ball will be back in the House's court. The House Republicans will then have to decide whether to shut down the government in a continuing attempt to force Obamacare defunding, or to back down and pass the resolution with Obamacare funding intact.
I think they'll probably back down this time, and shift the defunding fight to next month -- when the debate over raising the debt ceiling takes place. There is already a move to include a demand to defund Obamacare before agreeing to raise the debt ceiling in the House. They may think they'll have more support in the debt ceiling fight than in the fight to fund the government. But they are wrong.
The truth is that both fights really amount to the same thing -- shutting down the government. It's just a matter of whether to do it now, or to do it next month. And as a new CNBC Poll (conducted between September 16th and 19th of 800 nationwide adults, with a 3.4 point margin of error) shows, the American people don't like that threat.
It goes without saying that Democrats oppose this Republican effort to defund Obamacare. But the Republicans were hoping for enough support from members of their own party and independents to get a generous hunk of the general public's support for their effort. But as the chart above shows, that just isn't happening. About 59% of the general public and 65% of independent voters oppose their threat to shut down the government if Obamacare is not defunded. And even worse, they don't even have the support of a majority of their own party's voters. While a majority (54%) of teabaggers would like to see the government shutdown to stop Obamacare, the same is not true of all Republicans (where 48% oppose the tactic and only 36% support it).
The congressional GOP has once again painted itself into a corner, and finds itself in a no-win position. If they back down from their threat they will make the teabaggers mad (who have a lot of power in the primaries), and if they don't they will make the rest of America angry (who don't want to see a government shutdown -- and may display that anger in the next general election). It will be interesting to see what choice they make.
