Commentators see things looking bad for Republicans:
Jonathan Alter thinks Obama has won his ultimate objective, support from independents for 2012:
The good news for Obama is that the more liberals, lobbyists and apologists for the rich squawk, the more fiscally responsible he looks to the independent voters who will determine the election.
Better yet, under McConnell’s plan Obama would get credit for good budgetary intentions without blame for the pain, which will remain theoretical for now. At the risk of mixing dessert and vegetables, the “Big Fudge” lets him pose as a responsible pea eater without actually ingesting any of the wrinkled little suckers.
You can hear the centrist 2012 message now. “We wanted to slash the debt by $4 trillion and protect our children’s future,” the Democrats will say, conveniently forgetting how loud they’re bellyaching this week about their own president’s proposed cuts. “But the Republicans killed responsible deficit reduction to protect corporate jet owners.”Megan McArdle thinks that if we default and actual cuts are made and people see the consequence of that, the public will turn against the party. She chides them for not taking a very generous deal and jeopardizing electoral opportunities in 2012 and 2016:
Republicans have a decent shot of taking the White House and the Senate in 2012; by throwing that away with both hands they also throw away their best chance at repealing ObamaCare before it starts irrevocably altering health care markets. They also ensure that any deficit-reduction deal we do post election will be heavily weighted towards tax hikes; give Democrats a fresh crack at all the bits of the Obama agenda that they ignored in favor of passing health care; and probably let them preside over a mid-decade recovery that will leave the GOP in a very difficult electoral position in 2016.
The GOP will have taken a chance at meaningful entitlement reform and a mostly-spending budget deal, and thrown it away for literally no gain. Anything you can achieve by simply saying no, they can undo by simply persuading voters not to re-elect you. And the 1996 experience suggests that this will not be hard for them.Polls suggest support for tax increases has grown among the American public.
