Premature Anti-slashers – Digby's Hullabaloo

Premature Anti-slashers

by digby

The White House has to be pretty stoked about this. From Greg Sargent:

The new New York Times poll finds a plurality blames Bush, not Obama, for the deficit, and 72 percent disapprove of the GOP’s handling of the debt ceiling fight, versus only 47 percent who disapprove of Obama’s handling of it.

* But: The poll also finds that only 15 percent think the spending cuts in the deal went too far, versus 44 percent who said they don’t go far enough.

Those numbers mirror Gallup’s findings and suggest yet again that the public has internalized key aspects of the conservative economic worldview.

26% also thought that the President compromised too much with the Republicans but it’s always possible that 10% of those believe that he should have held out for deeper cuts.

When I look at the numbers I’m honestly wondering why the president doesn’t have a higher approval rating. (In fact, his approval rating did tick up a bit.)The only ones who are kvetching about the deal are the Tea Partiers, who apparently believe that a government default would have wiped out the debt, cynical Republicans who require the dismantling of the safety net before they’ll be satisfied and a tiny contingent of liberals who are not to be taken seriously under any conditions.

The public truly believes that the government needs to tighten its belt just like a family does during hard times — and that’s what this debt deal does. The only quibble is if it tightens it enough. Even if that’s tragically wrong, it makes intuitive sense and there is almost no one in public life who will say differently The problem, unfortunately, is that this wrong belief will harm the economy and their own financial well being. But this is a democracy and there’s no requirement that the people will see through a con job before it’s too late. We screeching 15% are all premature anti-slashers*.