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A new national poll provides more evidence of the political hit the Republican Party, the tea party movement, and House Speaker John Boehner took over the government shutdown.

According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Tuesday, 64% of Americans say they have an unfavorable view of the GOP, an all-time high dating back to 1992 when CNN first asked the question. Only three in 10 say they hold a favorable view of the party.

Fifty-six percent say they have an unfavorable view of the tea party movement, another record high in CNN polling. Only 28% say they see the 4-year-old grassroots conservative movement in a positive light.

The Democratic Party's 43%-51% favorable/unfavorable ratings are basically unchanged from late last month, just before the start of the shutdown.

The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, following the end of the 16-day government shutdown, which was sparked by a push by conservative Republican lawmakers in Congress to attach provisions dismantling or defunding the national health care law to must-pass bills to fund the government.

Boehner told House Republicans at the end of the shutdown that "we fought the good fight. We just didn't win."

But the poll suggests he's not winning the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans. Boehner's unfavorable rating now stands at 55%, up from 48% in late September.

"This is the first time the Speaker has been disliked by a majority of Americans," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Boehner's counterpart on the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid, actually saw his unfavorable rating drop a bit in the aftermath of the shutdown."

Boehner's favorable rating dropped nine percentage points among Republicans and eight points among conservatives.

The poll indicates Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who along with Reid negotiated the deal to end the shutdown, with a 23% favorable rating and a 42% unfavorable rating. McConnell's favorable rating is down four points from before the shutdown, with his unfavorable numbers up three points.

McConnell, who is up for re-election next year and is facing a conservative primary challenge, has a 41%-22% favorable/unfavorable rating among Republicans, but his numbers drop to 34%-36% among conservatives.

McConnell plunged 11 points among Republicans and ten points among conservatives since late last month.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was one of the ringmasters of the push to couple the dismantling Obamacare to funding the government, saw his favorable rating fall seven-points, to 23%, with his unfavorable rating jumping six-points to 42%. Cruz 's favorable rating dropped 12 points among Republicans and ten points among conservatives. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/22/cnn-poll-gop-tea-party
-unfavorables-at-all-time-highs/?hpt=hp_bn3

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The last time the government expanded health care, it was also kind of a disaster

If you think the launch of HealthCare.Gov isn't going so well, consider this: When online shopping for prescription drug programs launched back in 2005, things went so badly that the federal government didn't even get off the ground until three weeks after its scheduled launch.

The first obstacle was one of scheduling: Officials had initially scheduled the launch shopping component of the Web site on the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur.



The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to delay the launch, per then spokesman Gary Karr, as to "respect all partners out there and their religious beliefs,"

But even after that, the site where seniors were supposed to compare drug prescription insurance plans didn't launch until November.



"The Medicare folks have had some trouble getting the tool up and running," then-Washington Post reporter Chris Lee wrote on Nov. 8, 2005. "The original debut date was Oct. 13, but officials delayed it, citing the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. Next it was promised on Oct. 17, but that day, too, came and went without personalized plan comparisons being available."

A news briefing promised the site would be up and in the afternoon. It didn't happen. "Visitors to the site could not access it for most of the first two hours,: Lee reported. "When it finally did come up around 5 p.m., it operated awfully slowly."

"Certainly I remember, thinking back to 2005, that the launch of the Web site was challenging," says Jack Hoadley, a researcher at Georgetown University who has studied the Part D program since before its launch. "It was pretty regularly a source of frustration just like what we're experiencing now."

What Hoadley says surprised him though, reading back through old news clips over the past few days, is just how challenged the program's digital launch was. "I look back and remember it was rocky," he says, "But I don't think I remember the degree of the rockiness that was the case."

There were other challenges too. As Hoadley and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper on Part D's launch, when seniors called the 1-800 Medicare phone number for help, a review found the agency "only responded to calls accurately and completely only about two-thirds of the time."

Lee reported that an annual booklet sent out to seniors called "Medicare & You" contained "inaccurate details about some of the prescription plan choices." CMS later had to post a chart on the Web site with the accurate information.

The delays of the Medicare.Gov Web site weren't as big news as the glitches with HealthCare.Gov. Both of the stories above ran on page A17 of the news section, unlike the HealthCare.Gov stories that have regularly been landing on the front page.

Gary Karr, who served as a spokesman for Medicare during the rollout, doesn't remember the initial enrollment period being especially difficult. It was right after people signed up that was the real crunch time.

"The enrollment felt pretty good," he says. "The first three weeks of the actual benefit did not feel so good, especially the first week and a half. Every glitch was a problem that got reported in the local papers. That's how it felt to us."

What does seem similar, between the Part D launch and the health law's, is the quick rush to jump to conclusions about success or failure.

"There was also a rush to conclude something is good or bad really fast," Karr says. "That's not different than it was in 2005. Generally, the political system is not patient."

The data suggests that perhaps it should be: Medicare Part D, which is now wildly popular with seniors, had horrible approval ratings when it launched.

These days, about 90 percent of seniors say they are satisfied with their Part D coverage.

"The coverage that people ultimately get is the kind of coverage that they're looking for," Hoadley said of the Part D program. "They don't remember the glitches in the first weeks of getting coverage. It's the coverage that sticks with people." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/11/the-last-ti
me-the-government-expanded-health-care-it-was-also-kind-of-a-disaster/

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