Back in 2008, right after McCain picked Palin as VP, I spent almost an entire day reading about her and came to the conclusion that she was an ignorant, vindictive, narcissistic nutcase. Over the next couple weeks I fell into despair over McCain’s increasingly good poll numbers, but within a month, much of the rest of the country had come to the same conclusion about Palin that I had. Most people didn’t drop everything they were doing to read about Palin, so it took them a little longer, that’s all.
I think the same thing be happening with Paul Ryan’s Vouchercare plan. As much as Vouchercare hurt Republicans in a single race in NY-26 , it will only become more broadly unpopular as the public becomes more familiar with it. Nate Silver:
If these poll results are right, they represent a lot of danger to Republicans because they suggest that voters’ assessments of the Medicare proposal are not yet fully “priced in” to their views of the parties more broadly. Right now, most people aren’t paying all that much attention to the budget debates or to domestic politics more generally. But they will tune in at some point between now and next November, and when they do they may find that the Republicans’ approach to the budget is not to their liking.
It is in this context that interpretations of last week’s special election in New York become more useful. It essentially represented an acceleration of political time, with voters in this one corner of the country hearing and acting upon arguments that they would not ordinarily begin to consider until late next year.
Silver suggests that Republicans devise an exit strategy from the unwinnable quagmire of Vouchercare. They won’t, not when Paul Ryan is getting blowjobs from the “Morning Joe” crew every day, not when even the liberal Washington Post is telling them that they will be greeted as liberators.
The economy is back in the tank and Obama would be in a lot of trouble under normal circumstances. Praise Bieber and pass the vouchers.