Day: July 14, 2011

Majority of Republican Voters Recognize Need to Increase Revenues to Balance Budget

Buck Banks

26%

Of GOP voters think a deal to lift the debt ceiling should consist entirely of spending cuts, according to a new Gallup Poll. A large majority of Republicans believe that at least some tax revenue increases are necessary, which is contrary to the current position of the Republican congressional leadership. New York Times columnist Nate Silver: “The Republicans in the House of Representatives are extremely conservative on fiscal matters and are significantly out of step with the public as a whole.”

Poll: Voters Blame Bush over Obama for Bad Economy Two to One

Jon Ponder

54% to 27%

Ratio by which voters blame George Bush and Pres. Obama for the bad economy, according to a new Quinnipiac Poll. Voters also said they will blame Republicans (48%) over Obama (34%) if the debt ceiling is not raised, and 67% want the deficit closed with a mix of tax hikes and program cuts, while just 25% believe tax cuts alone can solve the crisis. All of this would be bad news for Republicans if it weren’t for the fact that the “liberal” media had not co-opted their cuts-only, no-tax-hikes-ever dogma.

If California’s Republican Counties Want to Secede, Let ‘Em

Jon Ponder

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
In California, as a general rule, money, population and scenic beauty are accumulated along the coast — which, as it happens, is also where the liberals live. The vast inland areas are generally poorer, less desirable and, as it happens, predominantly Republican.

Now, a politician from the benighted red region has proposed seceding from the rest of the state:

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone is leading the push to form the new state of “South California.” Made up of 13 conservative-leaning counties, including Fresno, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino, the 51st state would be the nation’s fifth-largest by population.

Stone told the New York Times he’s fed up with California’s dysfunctional state government, which routinely deadlocks over budget crises. “We have businesses leaving all the time, and we’re just driving down a cliff to become a third-world economy,” he said of a state whose economy is the eighth largest in the world.

“I am tired of California being the laughingstock of late-night jokes,” he added…

The unlikely effort is just the most recent in a long line of bids to split California since it became a state in 1850. The closest call came in 1941, when parts of Northern California and southern Oregon, citing poor infrastructure, pushed to create the new state of Jefferson.

A spokesman for California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, called the latest scheme “a supremely ridiculous waste of everybody’s time,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there’s a place called Arizona.”

[…]

Poll Finds Obama in Synch with Republican Voters on Debt Reduction

Jon Ponder

A new Gallup poll finds that just 20 percent of Americans agree with the Republican Party position that the deficit should be resolved by program cuts alone. In fact, only 26 percent of Republicans side with the Grover Norquist tax refuseniks. Not coincidentally, about 20 percent of Americans self-identify as tea party supporters.

Nate Silver uncovered a surprising finding in the data: the ratio of cuts versus revenue increases that Pres. Obama’s has proposed is to the right of the ratio preferred by most Republican voters:

Assume that the people who told Gallup that they wanted “mostly” cuts would prefer a 3-to-1 ratio of spending reductions to tax increases, and that those who said they wanted mostly tax increases would prefer a 3-to-1 ratio in the opposite direction. (The other choices that Gallup provided in the poll — an equal mix of tax increases and spending cuts or a deal that consisted entirely of one or the other — are straightforward to interpret.)

The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix:

chart-gallup-debt-pref

Now consider the positions of the respective parties to the negotiation. One framework that President Obama has offered, which would reduce the debt by a reported $2 trillion, contains a mix of about 17 percent tax increases to 83 percent spending cuts. Another framework, which would aim for twice the debt reduction, has been variously reported as offering a 20-to-80 or 25-to-75 mix.

With the important caveat that the accounting on both the spending and tax sides can get tricky, this seems like an awfully good deal for Republicans. Much to the chagrin of many Democrats, the mix of spending cuts and tax increases that Mr. Obama is offering is quite close to, or perhaps even a little to the right of, what the average Republican voter wants, let alone the average American.