Eight in 10 Americans find it unacceptable for either President Obama or members of Congress to threaten to shut down the government during budget negotiations in order to achieve their goals, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Fewer than 1 in 5 think the stalemate between Mr. Obama and the Republicans in Congress is acceptable. ...NYT
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Pew Research
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Americans see Republicans as somewhat more inflexible in the debate: just 1 in 4 say that Republicans in Congress are working with Mr. Obama. In the poll, Republicans themselves are divided as to whether their party is making efforts to work with the president. Nearly half of them say that Congressional Republicans are not working with Mr. Obama, and about 4 in 10 say they are.
But nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and three-quarters of independents say that Republicans in Congress are not making any attempt to find common ground with the president.
Mr. Obama is seen by half of Americans as trying to get things done with the Republicans. But that is down from 6 in 10 who said the same thing in January 2012 and three-quarters who said he would work with Republicans in 2010 and 2011.
Americans split along party lines about whether the president is reaching out to his political opponents. Just 1 in 5 Republicans say that. But nearly 8 in 10 Democrats say he is taking a bipartisan approach.
And what do independents think? They are split: 50 percent say he is not trying to work with Republicans, but 4 in 10 say he is. ...NYT
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A new Global Strategy Group (D) poll finds 35% would blame Republicans in Congress for a shutdown, 29% would blame President Obama and another 12% would blame congressional Democrats -- a total of 41% blaming either Obama or his Democratic allies in Congress. ...PoliticalWire
A new Bloomberg poll finds that just 25% of Americans say the U.S. is on the right track -- the lowest mark since September 2011, a month after S&P downgraded U.S. government debt. Sixty-eight percent say the country is headed down the wrong track. ...PoliticalWire
