A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows the strongest popular support yet – 77 percent – for public employee unions.
The same poll finds Obama’s popularity slipping and congressional Republicans playing a risky game by kow-towing to their Tea Party faction.
John Harwood of CNBC said the survey shows Republicans in Washington caught between powerful opposing forces: demands from the Tea Party right for spending cuts to reduce the budget deficits, and fears by crucial swing voter groups that cuts would harm them amid anxiety over the weak economy.
Those pressing hardest for spending cuts represent “an incredibly powerful but small ideological part of our electorate,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the NBC/WSJ survey with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart.
To the peril of Republican politicians, their priorities collide squarely with the concerns of younger voters, senior citizens, independents and suburban women whom the GOP needs to win elections, according to the CNBC report.
“It may be hard to understand why someone would jump off a cliff,” explained McInturff, “unless you understand they were being chased by a tiger. That tiger is the Tea Party.”
The poll results are pretty clear cut. Respondents oppose cuts in Medicare, Social Security, defense, Head Start, unemployment insurance, college loans, and heating assistance to low-income families.
That encouraging news for Democrats, Harwood writes, is not reflected in assessments of President Obama’s job performance, which has receded after the boost he received from his handlings of the Tucson shootings in January. Obama’s job approval rating in the survey was 48 percent, down from 53 percent in the previous NBC/WSJ poll.
As for the Wisconsin-based fight over public employee unions, the survey found that strong majorities back freezing the pay of public employees and requiring them to contribute more for pensions and health insurance.
But 77 percent of Americans said public employee unions should have the same right to bargain over such matters as private sector unions.
