Unskewed All The Way To Disaster

So we know that in 2012, conservative polling groups had a, shall we say, tenuous relationship with reality.  The question now becomes if Republicans are willing to buy the results of another poll, this time from GOP SuperPAC Heritage Action for America, and its advice that conservatives should shut down the government.

Heritage Action for America – one of the conservative groups leading the charge to pressure Republican lawmakers against voting to continue government spending unless they can defund President Barack Obama’s health care law – said its new poll of likely voters in 10 relatively competitive congressional districts showed that forcing such a shutdown would not be fatal for the GOP in 2014.

The fight over whether to shut down the government in this fall's battle over spending for the next fiscal year and relent somewhat on the implementation of Obamacare reflects the internal strife between the party's conservatives and more pragmatic party establishment.

The poll, which was conducted by Basswood Research from Aug. 7-8, also found that 28 percent of respondents in the 10 districts would blame Republicans for a shutdown over Obamacare, while 22 percent would blame Obama himself, and 19 percent would blame Democrats in Congress. Seventeen percent of respondents would spread blame among all three groups.

The poll also found that almost 60 percent of respondents would support a “temporary slowdown in non-essential federal government operations, which still left all essential government services running" in order to extract an agreement from the president to at least slow health care reform’s implementation.

Heritage Action's pitch is simple:  shutting down the government will hurt Obama as much as it will hurt the GOP, plus it'll force the President and Democrats to abandon Obamacare.

"Americans – including 57 percent of independents in ten critical congressional districts – favor defunding Obamacare," said Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action. "House Republicans should be much more concerned with the fallout of failing to defund Obamacare than with the imaginary fallout of doing so."

Heritage Action's pollster, Jon Lerner, added: "There is no present evidence that a move to defund Obamacare, and the potential of a partial government shutdown, would harm Republican prospects of holding the House majority.  In fact, the very same voters who are critical to keeping the majority – independents in potential competitive districts – hold highly negative views on Obamacare and strongly favor slowdown in implementation or outright repeal of the law."

So, if you believe that  3 out of 5 Americans want the Republicans to actually shut down the government in order to blackmail the President, then by all means guys, force that shutdown.  I'm sure that the Romney landslide in 2012 proves how reliable GOP pollsters and pundits are at testing the mood of the people...