Back in July, at vote 40 or 41 in the House to repeal Obamacare, before a government shutdown was barely a gleam in Rump Speaker Ted Cruz's eye,
America said let's let Obamacare start and see what happens.
A majority of adults don’t want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, according to the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, preferring instead to either spend more on its implementation or wait to see if changes are needed later. [...]
Given the choice to either repeal the law, wait and see how it takes effect, or add money to aid its implementation, only 36 percent of adults picked outright repeal. More than half chose to either wait and see (30 percent) or provide more money (27 percent).
By the way, back in July Congressional Republicans had an
approval rating in the low 20 percent range.
Fast forward a couple of months. Congress is back from its very long summer vacation, and starting to think about how to shut that whole thing down. Fifty-three percent of Americans disapprove of Obamacare, and 42 percent approve. But only 23 percent of voters think Republicans "should do what they can to make the law fail." Two weeks ago, CBS/NYT polling showed that just 21 percent of Americans approve of congressional Republicans.
Move ahead one week, one week closer to shutdown, and a narrative is emerging that defunding Obamacare is only popular with Republican primary voters, the only people with whom Republican members of Congress are still popular.
So what about this week? Obamacare only gets a straight 38 percent approval rating. But, "if you add the 38 percent who favor the law to the 11 percent to oppose the law because it's not liberal enough, you get 49 percent, compared with the 39 percent who say they oppose the law because it's too liberal." Also, too, 69 percent of people in this poll thinking the Republicans are "acting like spoiled children" in this debate. And:
New CNN/ORC poll: How Congress is Handling Its Job - Approve 10% Disapprove 87%
— @JimAcostaCNN
It's a slam dunk. America likes Obamacare more than congressional Republicans. And now that Republicans shut down the government, without even succeeding in
stopping Obamacare, it's going to be far more popular.