Last Call To Get Poll-verized

If you're wondering why John Boehner is offering a six-week debt ceiling raise, no end to the government shutdown, and nothing for the Democrats, it's because he needs that long to try to figure a way out of the mess this game-ending NBC/WSJ poll represents.

With House Republicans set to meet with President Barack Obama to discuss raising the debt limit and ending the government shutdown, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 63 percent of Americans believe refusing to raise the debt ceiling would be a real and serious problem. 

That's up from the 55 percent who said this in July 2011, during the last political fight over raising the debt ceiling.

And yes, that 63% overall number is high enough that it means a majority of Boehner's own party believes this.

But there is a partisan divide here: 72 percent of Democrats believe not raising the debt ceiling would be a real and serious problem, versus 57 percent of Republicans and independents who think this. 

And there's also a significant split inside the Republican Party: Among Republicans not supporting the Tea Party, 71 percent say not raising the debt ceiling would be a serious problem.

But only 44 percent of Republicans who are Tea Party supporters agree.

The full poll is far worse for the GOP.  Among the findings:

• A record low for GOP favorability (24% positive, 53% negative, including 29% strongly negative)
• A record low for Tea Party favorability (21% positive, 47% negative)
• 47% favor a Democratic Party controlled Congress, only 39% now want the GOP in charge of Congress
• And the big one, a majority of Americans now blame the GOP for the shutdown, 53% to President Obama's 31% (13% blame both sides).

That's the ballgame, folks.  The rest now is posturing, face-saving, and whining on the part of the GOP. Obama should give Boehner nothing.  Senate needs to pass a clean debt ceiling bill and send it to the House and we can end this when the tropical fruit-colored bastard caves.