Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 59% of Republicans want compromise

Thursday�s NBC/WSJ News poll finds a major shift among Republicans on whether or not the party should make concessions to Democrats in order to avoid the �fiscal cliff.�

In April, 38 percent of Republicans favored compromise between the two parties on the budget. Now, 59 percent do � the first majority of Republicans to support compromise in NBC/WSJ polling on the issue.

Sixty-one percent of Republicans would accept higher taxes on the wealthy as part of a deal. What they are least willing to accept is giving the president the power to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval. Larger military and defense cuts were also considered unpalatable by most Republicans.

Even as Republicans express a willingness to compromise, their brand has been badly damaged by the perception that the party is unyielding. Asked an open-ended question as to what single word or short phrase people would use to describe the Republican Party, 65 percent of the responses were negative, while just 17 percent were positive.

Desire for compromise is also at an all-time high among Democrats, at 70 percent. The most acceptable compromise for Democrats would be continuing tax cuts for high-earners; the least acceptable would be larger cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Get Ready for Obama�s First Term

By Stanley Kurtz
November 6, 2012 11:21 P.M.

National Review On-line

Barack Obama has won reelection. Will America now lose its distinct characteristics and be transformed into a Euro-style welfare state? Quite possibly, yet there remains one way out. At this point, only a sweeping new grassroots rebellion on the model of the Tea Party could change things. In the wake of a presidential election so discouraging for conservatives, a massive new tea-party wave may not appear to be in the cards. Yet a resurgent second-term challenge to Obama from populist conservatives is far more likely than it seems.

That�s because the president�s first term hasn�t really happened yet, at least not in the conventional sense. Ordinarily, a president enacts various policies in his first term, the public test-drives the changes, and the president�s reelection campaign is a referendum on those new policies. The difference in Obama�s case is that in order to secure reelection, he has backloaded nearly all of his most transformative and controversial changes into a second term. Obama�s next term will actually put into effect health-care reform, Dodd-Frank, and a host of other highly controversial policies that are already surging through the pipeline yet still barely known to the public.

Obama�s transformative changes to date have been far more theory than practice. While reelection may bring sullen public acceptance when Obama�s most controversial policies actually take effect, the reverse is equally possible. Once people actually begin to experience de facto health-care rationing, for example, they might get even angrier than they were in 2009�2010, when rationing was only a prospect. The same principle applies to a host of other issues (cap-and-trade via regulation, financial regulations, comprehensive immigration reform, national school curricula, urban-suburban policy). And this time, the public could be angered not only by the policies, but by growing recognition that actual enactment of Obama�s agenda was delayed for political purposes.

The fact that Obama has only very narrowly secured reelection � unusual, since reelected presidents normally expand their initial electoral margins � might seem to contradict this high-conflict scenario. You can certainly argue that a barely-reelected president would be smart to pull in his horns and govern from the middle. Yet that�s not who Barack Obama is, and it�s certainly not the premise upon which he ran his campaign. Obama took the intentionally risky path of alienating half the country with an in-your-face negative campaign because he believed that demographics now allow him to cobble together a leftist majority in support of transformative change. Whether that demographic vision is accurate or not, Obama and his advisers believe that it is, and so will govern with relative disregard for opposition, however vocal.

The reelection of a Republican House of Representatives might also seem to have a moderating impact on the president, and to a limited degree it does. Yet Obama has cast aside conventional restraints on executive power with his pre-election orders on welfare reform and immigration. He will thus interpret reelection as a license to rule by executive order � well beyond the traditional limits on executive power. In the absence of intense populist pressure on a Congress facing another tea-party electoral wave in 2014, it will be impossible to prevent Obama from abusing his executive authority.

Even the conventional post-election honeymoon period may be short-lived. A huge controversy over the fiscal cliff looms in the lame-duck session of Congress. Obama has predicted that in the wake of his reelection, the Republican �fever� will break. Given the stakes, his conduct of this campaign, and Obama�s evident transformative intentions, a bitter showdown is more probable.

The long and short of it is that President Obama has won reelection, but in a way likely to propel national polarization well beyond its current level. By delaying his most controversial policy changes to a second term, laying the basis for (arguably unconstitutional) rule by executive order, and running a negative campaign designed to realign the electorate leftward, Obama has laid the foundation for a high-conflict future. What�s more, he knows it, and he�s ready for it. Obama is willing to pay the price of national division for the sake of making the transformative changes he seeks. So a massive increase in polarization is exactly what we�re likely to get.

To put it another way, because the public has never truly seen the changes he�s enacted put into practice, Obama has an exceedingly tenuous mandate. But he doesn�t care. All Obama wants to do is to squeak by, after which he plans to depend on shifting demographics to cement his sweeping transformation in place. The question is, have Americans really changed as much as Obama thinks, or will the actual arrival of his long-delayed first-term agenda in his second term set off a populist movement that brings his plans to a halt?

LOL at this poll.

Hilarious.... if you actually go into the poll, the claim by NBC is a complete twisting of the findings.

51% of Republicans actually said NO COMPROMISE whatsoever. 2% were unsure and only 32% actually said increase taxes for $250k and over, which completely contradicts the articles claim of 59%.



This is why it's helpful to use links, so people aren't bullshyted.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/_Today_Stories_Teases/NBCPOLL1212.pdf

This Republic was founded on compromise.

It's not a dirty word.

Oh, and the poll internals show that NBC polled 45% Democrats to 20% Republicans.... Nothing like Goebbels level propaganda.

Lying and deceit should be.

Well think about it, its compromise or just plain lose. For the Bush tax cuts to expire, Obama has to do nothing at all; so he wins by default. Pretty much any compromise is better than 100% victory for Obama.

[bleep] compromise.

The funny thing is that some people still think the republicans have a leg to stand on in the fiscal cliff debate. They either have to compromise and give Zero what he wants or they will loose huge in the mid-terms.

When the average American is hit with a $3000 tax bill and the media has been blaming it on the GOP, you can bet on a lot of fence jumpers.

We truly are in a bad state right now.

Funny how when a GOP congress does something good under a Dem president(think balance the budget), the president gets credit (think Clinton). But when they do something "bad" under a Dem president, they get the blame.

The GOP continues to play "small ball" here. They have no principles, merely a desire to make it through the next election, then the election after that, and the election after that.

Hats off to the Democrats. They probably knew that passing Obamacare was going to get them beat up in the 2010 elections. They did it anyway. They took a beating in 2010, but now they're back on track and they have Obamacare to boot.

Exactly..

I actually think that IF ( and that 'if' is impossible) the GOP would quit infighting and just say NO to this a-hole, they might win something..

They're gonna lose anyway, so might as well take a stand now. And since all money's gotta go through Congress, the GOP should (but they won't) say to the Emperor, "you get NOTHING"...

And walk away..

All that's true..

Back on track is right.. On track to ruin the country and it'll be interesting to see what happens to 'em then...

That's why 59% of them need to go. But say they were electable moderates. How's that [bleep] sounding now?

Compromising with a pathological lying,narcissistic,closet homosexual, Communist, Muslim criminal is not an option for patriots.

When you have read "Dreams From My Father",The Audacity Of Hope","The Obama Nation","Culture Of Corruption,"Crimes Against LIberty","The Man Behind The Mask","The Manchurian President",then you can post with authority.Until then you're just another ignorant left wing hack,who participates in the destruction of this nation.I pity your children.

"The Great Social(ist) Experiment"

That's how I look at Hussein's second term.

I wonder how our country will "look" after four more years of ...

Obamcare, trillion dollar plus debts every year, increased taxes, increased gov spending, increased gov regulations, stagnation of the economy, conflicts in the ME, weak foreign policy ...

It will be interesting to see if the Democratic party survives the repercussions of "The Great Social(ist) Experiment".

Correct. Obama wants to go over the cliff and raise taxes on everyone and the message will be spread loud and clear it was because republicans wanted to help the rich. Rush and Rand know this is the grand scheme to destroy the republican party.

Sam Houston's first contact with the enemy resulted in a hasty retreat, only to attack later. He lost the battle and won the war. We are going over the cliff. Who will history blame?

The dimocraps are surviving by morphing into the communist party.

Dead patriots tell no tales.

Bullshitt.

The Repubs will get the blame regardless of what actually occurs,but citizens will eventually conlude that Obama was the problem.So Repubs should not leave their fingerprints on Obama's onerous tax policies.Let Obama take all the blame for the impending disaster.

Correct. Republicans need to tell the Democrats that if you want it, vote it in, without our help. You have the votes so use them and own this. miles

But not the compromise of today where the only one compromising is the conservatives. Oberry has not compromised in four years.