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A prominent conservative group marshaled new polling data on Wednesday to try and convince reluctant Republicans that forcing a government shutdown over “Obamacare” wouldn’t necessarily harm the GOP, or cost the party control of the House of Representatives.

Heritage Action for America – one of the conservative groups leading the charge to pressure Republican lawmakers against voting to continue government spending unless they can defund President Barack Obama’s health care law – said its new poll of likely voters in 10 relatively competitive congressional districts showed that forcing such a shutdown would not be fatal for the GOP in 2014.

The fight over whether to shut down the government in this fall's battle over spending for the next fiscal year and relent somewhat on the implementation of Obamacare reflects the internal strife between the party's conservatives and more pragmatic party establishment.

The poll, which was conducted by Basswood Research from Aug. 7-8, also found that 28 percent of respondents in the 10 districts would blame Republicans for a shutdown over Obamacare, while 22 percent would blame Obama himself, and 19 percent would blame Democrats in Congress. Seventeen percent of respondents would spread blame among all three groups.

The poll also found that almost 60 percent of respondents would support a “temporary slowdown in non-essential federal government operations, which still left all essential government services running" in order to extract an agreement from the president to at least slow health care reform’s implementation.

Still, Heritage Action’s survey isn’t meant to reflect broad, nationwide support for a government shutdown. Rather, the numbers are intended to assuage Republican lawmakers who worry that such a hard-line strategy heading into this fall’s fiscal debate would have disastrous consequences for the party.

"Americans – including 57 percent of independents in ten critical congressional districts – favor defunding Obamacare," said Michael Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action. "House Republicans should be much more concerned with the fallout of failing to defund Obamacare than with the imaginary fallout of doing so."

Heritage Action's pollster, Jon Lerner, added: "There is no present evidence that a move to defund Obamacare, and the potential of a partial government shutdown, would harm Republican prospects of holding the House majority. In fact, the very same voters who are critical to keeping the majority – independents in potential competitive districts – hold highly negative views on Obamacare and strongly favor slowdown in implementation or outright repeal of the law."

Wednesday’s numbers also precede a Heritage Action bus tour set to play out in coming weeks in which former Sen. Jim DeMint (the current head of the Heritage Foundation) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s spearheaded the Obamacare-shutdown strategy, would barnstorm key states and congressional districts.

But a number of high-profile Republicans have also castigated the strategy. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., described the plan as “shenanigans,” and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said last week that he didn’t believe the country “needs or wants a shutdown.”

"Let’s not kid ourselves. We’ll be blamed," GOP heavyweight Karl Rove said of the strategy on Monday. "This assumes that Democrats are going to be scared of a shutdown. They’re not. They want it. They know what happened to us in 1995."

Still, conservatives like Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have rallied the Republican grassroots behind their strategy. Undergirding their approach is their argument that fighting Obamacare to the fullest extent would become a political winner for Republicans. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/14/20010200-conservative-ac
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McConnell: Shutdown Won't Stop ObamaCare

On Tuesday, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell spoke publicly about an effort by conservatives to tie ObamaCare funding to overall government spending. Under a plan pushed by Sens. Cruz and Lee, Republicans would support a continuing resolution to fund government, but only if ObamaCare spending is removed. They believe Obama would be blamed for any government shutdown if he were to veto the spending plan.

"I'm for stopping ObamaCare, but shutting down the government will not stop ObamaCare," McConnell said at an event in Kentucky. McConnell had previously declined to stake a position on the defunding effort. His public remarks are noteworthy because McConnell now faces a potentially competitive primary challenge from conservative businessman Matt Bevins.

His aides point to a recent study by the Congressional Research Service, which found that much of ObamaCare implementation would continue even if the government shut down. Many of the provisions in ObamaCare are funded by the law itself, rather than the annual spending bill approved by Congress. Funds to implement ObamaCare would continue to flow, even if the rest of the government shutdown.

That said, the push to use the debate over a continuing resolution to defund ObamaCare has become an important, principled fight for many conservatives. A new continuing resolution must be passed by October 1 to avoid a government shutdown. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/14/McConnell-Against-O
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Heritage Action polled this question: “If there was an effort in Congress to temporarily halt funding for the health care law, which of the following is the president most likely to do. . .?” Voters were given two options: President Obama would compromise or he’d insist on having it his way. More than 63 percent said he’d want to have it his way. Then the poll asked ”in order to get President Obama to agree to at least have a ‘time out’ on implementing the health care law and its full effects would you approve or disapprove of a temporary slowdown in non-essential government operations, which still left all essential government services operating” Lo and behold with that wording about 59 percent agreed.

This is nonsense of course. Republicans would have to shut down the government and be willing to do it for as long as it took, hoping the president would cave. And of course no definition of “non-essential” is given. The question asked has nothing to do with reality, yet in its press release Heritage Action pronounced that their polls show “the idea of defunding Obamacare is broadly supported. Moreover, the potential of a partial government shutdown does little to dampen the desire to stop the implementation of Obamacare.” Um, not really. “Government shutdown” wasn’t part of the question.

The poll is a pure advocacy poll, intended to drive a certain result by monkeying around with the question and the pool of respondents. (Notice that Jim DeMint the head of Heritage Foundation was pushing publicly for a government shutdown; conveniently Heritage Action follows up in quick order with this less than objective poll.)

Moreover, the poll asserts that it measures “swing districts.” (“On August 7-8, 2013, Basswood Research conducted a nationwide survey of likely general election voters in ten different Congressional districts. Six of those House districts are presently held by Republicans, four are held by Democrats. They broadly represent a cross-section of Republican-leaning but not safe-Republican districts. The Republican held seats are FL-2, IL-18, NJ-7, NC-2, OH-12, and OR-2. The Democratic held seats are GA-12, NC-7, UT-4, and WV-3.”) This is grossly misleading.

Charlie Cook ranks congressional districts with its Partisan Voting Index (PVI), the higher the number the greater the lean toward that party. (“PVIs are calculated by comparing the district’s average Democratic (or Republican) Party’s share of the two-party presidential vote in the past two presidential elections to the nation’s average share of the same.”) A perfectly balanced district would be at zero. Every single one of these districts with a GOP congressman has a GOP PVI of at least +6. The average PVI of these districts is over +10 Republican. The districts currently with a Democratic representative are even more right-leaning, with PVI ratings between +9 and +16 GOP (an average of + 12.75 GOP). Overall, President Obama lost these seats by an average of 18 points. If anything it shows that if you ask a distorted question you can get evidence that ultra-safe districts won’t flip to the other party. Beyond that, the poll is frankly nonsense.

So, only by asking a misleading question, misrepresenting the results and going to select ultra-conservative districts could Heritage Action come up with a majority to support its suicide mission. Republicans on the Hill should pay heed to the lengths Heritage Action would go to convince them. And those covering the Heritage Action poll should be honest in explaining what it does and does not tell us.

Why do you think this much jury-rigging is needed to push its agenda? Maybe Heritage Action’s poll, like Heritage Foundation’s widely discredited study on the economic impact of immigration reform, actually tells us how out of touch with reality Heritage has become. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/08/15/heritages
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