Skeptic Project

There were several polls released last month showing fairly consistent results: the Affordable Care Act isn't popular, but the American mainstream wasn't on board with the repeal crusade. Republicans didn't care, and every GOP lawmaker on the Hill voted for repeal anyway.

A month later, Republicans want to block funding for the health care law. And once again, the Affordable Care Act still isn't popular, but most Americans don't like this GOP plan, either.

A majority of the public disapproves of the Republican idea to cut off funding for health care reform, a new CBS News poll shows -- although most also disapprove of the health care law, and many aren't sure of its impact on the health care system.

Republicans in Congress have said they intend to do everything in their power to stop President Obama's health care reforms from going into place -- including de-funding provisions of the legislation. Funding for the new health care reforms is one component of the debate Republicans intend to have with the president this year over federal spending, deficit reduction and government regulations. [...]

Most Americans, 55 percent, disapprove of the plan to cut off funding to the new health care reforms, and just 35 percent approve.

In fairness, it's worth noting that the same poll found that a narrow majority of Americans disapprove of the health reform law and doubt it will improve the system, results that will no doubt please its conservative detractors. It's unclear just how many of those polled don't like the law because they want it to go further (disapproving from the left) vs. those who think it goes too far (disapproving from the right).

Either way, though, the public still doesn't like what Republicans have in mind. GOP lawmakers seem to assume that Americans are standing with them in their campaign to gut the health care law, but the evidence suggests these Republicans' assumptions are baseless.

And yet, their crusade continues unabated. It's no longer clear exactly why Republicans hate the law so much, but Jon Chait's recent take continues to ring true: "[T]he Affordable Care Act has become to the right a symbolic totem that has little to do with actual policies. Its very existence is an enduring emotional wound.... The GOP is operating not on the basis of some analysis of public policy but from a sheer pathology."

It's a pathology the American mainstream has no use for.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_02/028023.php