He finds a strange new nervousness among Republican elites – especially if the GOP forces a government shutdown or a refusal to increase the debt limit. Money quote:
Look no further than late February’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted by Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff… 75 percent of Republicans thought government was trying to do too much while 27 percent thought government should do more. But among independents, 51 percent thought government should do more, with 47 percent saying government was trying to do too much.
While those numbers among independents are effectively tied, they are a far cry from the 60-38 percent of independents who thought government was trying to do too much in the mid-October, preelection poll and a lot more like the numbers that existed in spring 2009, before Democratic prospects began to nosedive. That poll was conducted February 24-28 among 1,000 adults and has a 3-point error margin, larger among sub-groups.
The Dish 