Saturday, November 13, 2010

Buyer's Remorse

Charles Blow has an interesting column up which examines the most recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Apparently Americans are not really all that enthused about the results of the midterm elections and may in fact be suffering "buyer's remorse."

Democrats still searching for a silver lining to the waxing they took last Tuesday can cheer up a bit. According to a new poll, the public may already be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse about the choices they’ve made, and Republicans seem to have unrealistic expectations about what their leaders will be able to accomplish.

A poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center found that people are considerably less happy about the Republicans’ victory than they were about the Democrats’ victory in 2006 or about the Republicans’ victory in 1994. They also approve much less of the “Republicans’ policies and plans for the future” than they did of the Democrats’ plans in 2006 or the Republicans’ plans in 1994. ...


The poll itself can be accessed here and the report section seems to indicate more than buyer's remorse. My take on the report is that Americans in general were unhappy with the campaigns and are developing an outright distaste for government in general, especially as it is presently constituted. There isn't much jubilation in the Republican victory by Republican respondents, and there appears to be a call for both sides to get on with the business of government without the rancor and radical rhetoric which has marred the last two years and especially the election.

For example, and this surprised me, a majority of the respondents don't want the healthcare bill repealed, although a sizable portion want the bill tweaked. This simply doesn't match up with the campaign promises made by the Republicans to throw out the bill entirely as they tilted their campaigns to satisfy the Tea Partiers. In fact, a lot of the Republican respondents want their party to move away from that radical fringe.

If the poll is in fact an accurate reflection of the mood of the American public, a whole lot of people are going to be disappointed in the 112th Congress.

Labels: ,

2 Comments:

Blogger PurpleGirl said...

Which proves just what idiots they are... because now they (we) are stuck with the crazies for the next two years and the powers-that-be will continue to take the election results as indicative of what the public wants.

6:16 AM  
Blogger Jonathan Versen said...

Somehow I don't see them repealing healthcare reform, although I do see the GOP scaling back its funding.

2:33 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home