Sunday, May 5, 2013

As Long As It's Their Idea

Interesting:
While the public overwhelmingly supports background checks for gun buyers and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Americans largely retreat into their partisan camps when asked whether President Obama or Congressional Republicans will make the right decisions on those and other domestic issues facing the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

That disconnect could explain why Democrats and Mr. Obama are still struggling to translate public support into tangible political backing for their initiatives. Americans did not give Mr. Obama high marks for his handling of those issues — even though more than two-thirds of Americans over all, including a majority of Republicans, disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their job.
In other words, even though the vast majority of Americans favor background checks and a realistic way of addressing immigration, the Republicans would rather slit their own political throats than appear to be working in a bipartisan manner.

That is obviously the influence of the intolerant Teahadists who are still unable to accept the fact that an African American won the presidency, not to mention doing so twice. The Teahadists are showing that they would only accept these measures if it was proposed by a Teapublican, ignoring the fact that no Teapublican would even consider either of these if they were in power, no matter how loudly or clearly the public made their voices heard.

There is another part of the report that reignites a spark of hope that things might still get better some day (emphasis mine):
Though churning support for his agenda remains a problem for the president, according to the poll, Congress is struggling with overcoming its own unfavorable image. Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, the poll found, and nearly 9 in 10 said most members of Congress were more concerned with serving special interest groups than helping the people they represent.

“It’s like the gladiator sports, where the emperor keeps the people entertained, even though we’re starving,” said Roberta Hughes, 61, of Elizabeth City, N.C. “But real people are losing out in real ways when they enact the drama.”
People are starting to wake up and recognize the truth of how things really are. The question is whether that knowledge will be enough to overcome their apathy in the next election.

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