Forty-four percent of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown, compared to 35 percent blaming the president and Democrats. Seventy-two percent disapprove of the shutdown, and that number would be higher if the poll didnÂ’t include self-righteous tea party zealots, more than half of whom support the shutdown even though it is undeniably terrible for the country.
This is who the Republican Party serves now. And for what?
The Affordable Care Act is a law, which is a rule the American people recognize after a complicated series of (expensive) governmental procedures formalizes it. If a law is bad, it can be challenged, which this was, and the Supreme Court upheld it last year.
According to the theoretical concept of America, people who hate the concept of a health care marketplace modeled off Republican Mitt Romney’s largely successful health insurance program in Massachusetts can elect new leaders who might overturn the law. But since that will never happen because they don’t have the numbers and never will, the GOP is refusing to agree to a budget — something entirely separate from an existing law that is moving forward even without the government working — unless the president of the United States repeals part of a law he championed during the presidential race he just won.
Most Americans understand and respect the president’s answer: “**** that.”
The good news is that the Republican Party cannot continue to operate as a morally inept entity fueled only by a capitalistic agenda hidden behind a family-values, old-world narrative.
These people run for office behind signs that read jobs.GOP.gov, and then they shut the government down over a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. Now, 800,000 Americans canÂ’t go to work, costing the U.S. economy $300 million a day. Even people who donÂ’t follow politics can understand how spiteful and unproductive it is.