Here is a legit question, then, what can be done to make sure the conservative public image remains intact enough so that they actually can keep the House and win a majority in the Senate? They have about 13 months to do so, what can they do, and what progress is being made so that by Nov of next year, the public is still not holding the House GOP solely responsible for the shutdown and voting based on those feelings?
Thing is, the last prolonged shutdown, in 1996, led to Clinton winning election and a massive Democrat victory in Congress too. I think this is one reason why older Republicans, even those who agreed with the principles behind the shutdown, were not nearly as enthusiastic as Team Cruz to begin with. They may have remembered what happened in 1996 and feared that conservatives and Republicans did not have the ability to explain themselves that they would need to stop a repeat of it. As conservative stalwarts like PJ O Rourke and Thomas Sowell himself have said, this has been a serious issue with conservatives/Republicans for decades now.
So what do we do and what progress has been made as of now?
The thing is, Rasmussen< i had thought, was one of the few polls that didn’t artificially collect sample in favor of Democrats, unless I am mistaken. If they are reporting a 17 % Dem lead, that is utterly mortifying and heart wrenching.
In response to your question, the 2014 off-year election is not going to be the same as 1996, which was a presidential year. Most of the house districts are so gerrymandered that at most, either party will net maybe 10 seats. Republicans should (I said SHOULD) pick up Senate seats, based on geography alone.
I was never an advocate for attaching the defunding of ObamaCare to the budget. I would have supported a separate bill to defund ObamaCare but the shutdown should never have happened over the defunding of ObamaCare.
Where I take issue is the fact that the Senate is the one that shut down the government for failing to vote on what the House sent up to them. Yes, defund ObamaCare was part of the deal, but the Senate refused to vote on it. This was a Senate shutdown. Of course the dems are going to blame the republicans, they’ve been blaming the republicans even when the republicans were the minority in the House. They will ALWAYS blame the republicans. It’s called politics.
When republicans such as McCain bame republicans, that’s where we have problems. I’m not voting for my republican Senator in 2014. This will be a first for me. If my Senator loses, yes the media will claim it’s because of the shutdown even though my Senator was against the Tea Party as much as John McCain was.
I’m voting for my Tea Party Governor’s re-election but not for the Senate.
Remember, the loss in the polls the GOP may be experiencing is not just those “independents” and “republican leaning” liberal democrats polled but also republicans who were not at all happy with the RINO attacks and the republican establishment joining the democrats to point fingers and name call particular fractions of the GOP.
Count me as one of those unhappy with the GOP. I’ll bet many Freepers would have voted the same in that poll.
Actually Bob Dole led to Clinton's re-election in 1996.
Gerald Ford - (impeachment of Nixon)
George H Walker Bush (Reagan's coattails)
Bob Dole - defeated
John McCain - defeated
Mitt Romney - Defeated