A poll from Rasmussen Reports out on Tuesday shows that a majority would be open to a government shutdown to allow for the defunding of Obamacare. This is evidence that the American people are willing to give Tea Partiers more than what they are asking for. Rasmussen found 51 percent of Americans support “having a partial government shutdown until Democrats and Republicans agree on what spending for the health care law to cut” and 53 percent of Americans support a partial shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what general spending to cut.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), among the many other conservative leaders pushing for the defunding of Obamacare, are not asking for a government shutdown. They are asking to pay for all of government at current spending levels except for Obamacare.
“We don’t want a government shutdown,” Lee said in a recent interview with Breitbart News. “What the left, and the left-leaning media establishment, and even some Republicans have been claiming is that this is a push for a shutdown. It is not that. We don’t want a shutdown. We don’t need a shutdown. This is a great way of avoiding a shutdown. What we’re saying is we’re willing to fund everything in government, even the programs we don’t like very much, we’re willing to fund all of that and to extend spending at current levels, we just don’t want to fund Obamacare.”
Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin made a similar point this weekend on “Breitbart News Sunday with Stephen K. Bannon.” “I think it’s important to highlight that means fund portions of the government that the Tea Party movement doesn’t even like,” Martin said. “And, also, it is to fund the government for a full year so we don’t keep coming to the brink every 60 to 90 days the way we’ve been doing for the last few years. We need some stability in our government. What we’ve been asking for is to fund the entire government, fund it for a year, just do not pay for Obamacare.”
Even though Tea Partiers are not pushing for a government shutdown, it appears at least from this polling data that the Tea Party has much more of a mandate in this fight than those in Washington, D.C., are willing to publicly admit. The majority of the American people are willing to give the Tea Party a government shutdown over Obamacare defunding, which is even more than what it is asking for in this battle.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.