Raw Story: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday asserted that his crusade to kill President Barack Obama’s health care law by shutting down the U.S. government had not damaged the Republican Party in any way.Unless I’m misunderstanding Ted here, he’s basically saying that people are spending too much time looking at polls and not enough time finding out what people think — which is, of course, complete nonsense. Polls are what people think. That’s the whole freakin’ point.
During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Cruz if he had hurt the GOP brand.
“Not remotely,” Cruz laughed. “But I also think far too many people are worried about politics.”
“Listen, if we worry about what’s impacting the American people, the politics will take care of itself,” he continued. “The politicians that are gazing at polls — there is a reason why the most common sentiment across this country is that politicians aren’t listening to us, there’s a reason why Congress has a 10 to 15 percent approval rating.”
So let’s take a look at what people are thinking about the shutdown and how it’s not hurting the GOP at all, shall we?
Teagan Goddard: A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that if the 2014 midterm elections were held today, Republicans “would be in grave danger of losing control of the House of Representatives.”Ted Cruz is Chicken Little in reverse; he’s saying everything is fine, while the sky actually is falling.
In a series of 24 surveys in GOP-held House districts, Republican incumbents are behind in match ups with generic Democratic challengers in 17 districts. In 4 other districts, the incumbent Republican trails after being told that the incumbent supported the government shutdown. In just 3 districts are incumbents leading generic challengers after voters are told the incumbent supported the government shutdown.
Democrats need 17 seats to win control of the House. These results show that if the election were held today, such a pickup would be within reach.
And it’s falling hard.
