Will the GOP be Made to Pay for the Super Committee Failure?

Most Americans are disgusted with Congress's apparent inability to get the nation's work done. Worse yet, many are - in my view belatedly - grasping the fact that the GOP is putting partisanship gamesmanship ahead of the economic well being of millions of Americans. In their quest to destroy Barack Obama, many in the GOP are more than happy to allow the economy to continue to crash and burn. It's rather sick, but welcome to today's GOP. A piece in The Daily Beast makes the case that the public has figured out who is to blame - especially on the so-called Super Committee failure - and that swing voters are particularly displeased.It would be, of course, sweet justice if the GOP's selling the county out for political gain in fact came back to bite them in the ass big time. Here are some column highlights:

There will be an enduring political price to pay for last week’s pathetic face-plant. And while confidence in the entire institution’s [Congress's] capacity to reason together will continue to decline, polls show that congressional Republicans are taking the brunt of the blame, specifically among swing voters.

Here’s why: all the 2010 talk about dealing with the generational theft of deficits and debt ended up taking a back seat to antitax theology when it mattered most.

To add insult to the injury of this lost opportunity, there was actually broad agreement among the American public about a balanced plan that could have reduced the long-term deficit and debt while sacrificing Republican and Democrat sacred cows. People understand this was a failure of political will produced by the disproportionate influence of special interests.

Dig beneath the surface of Gallup’s new poll showing that 55 percent of Americans blame both parties for the failure of the supercommittee, and you’ll see the remaining breakdown leans decidedly against the GOP . . .

40 percent of independent voters would blame Republicans more for a supercommittee failure, while 24 percent would blame the Democrats. Likewise, 47 percent of self-identified centrists said they would blame the GOP, while 25 percent said the Dems would be most at fault. The key dynamic to watch is the nearly 2-to-1 split when independents and centrists are asked which party is to blame for supercommittee failure.

[T]he real question is why such a split exists on the supercommittee. One answer can be found in the support that existed for the broad outlines of a bipartisan compromise. Keep in mind that two thirds of Americans rarely agree on anything—but CNN polling earlier this month found that 67 percent of Americans supported raising taxes on higher-income Americans and businesses as part of a supercommittee plan to deal with the deficit and debt. Likewise, 66 percent supported major spending cuts to domestic government programs.

In other words, there was ample public support for a grand bargain in addition to the congressional Gang of 150. A not-incidental 54 percent of independents say that they wanted to see more compromise from the supercommittee in pursuit of a deal. The supercommittee failed because of a lack of political will—particularly on the part of Republicans who refused to consider any revenue increases unless they were accompanied by major reductions in the top tax rate or a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts.

Republican blame for the supercommittee failure is resonating because it calls into question their commitment to actually dealing with the deficit and the debt. After all, it was not a popular conservative cause when deficits first started to explode during the Bush era. . . . When taxes always trump deficit reduction, fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility have been delinked.

[S]wing voters are starting to assign blame in ways that should be both a warning and a wake-up call to congressional Republicans as they look to 2012.

Frankly, I do not see the GOP waking up to reality. Increasingly - even among the few remaining GOP moderates I know - the Party lives in a bubble and takes it directions from the Christian Right (which behaves in anything but a Christian manner) and the oligarchs like the Koch brothers. Massive election losses are the only wake up call that will get the message to sink in.