In the wake of the Supreme Court's health care ruling, the Republican strategy, from its presidential nominee to the bottom of the ballot, is to simply push for repealing the Affordable Care Act. It's a straightforward proposition: the GOP figures the law is unpopular, so voters will reward the party for vowing to kill "Obamacare."
But over the last few days, some interesting polling results have been released, and it's worth highlighting the disconnect between the Republican position and that of the American mainstream.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, for example, asked respondents, "Which comes closer to your view? Now that the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold the health care law, opponents of the law should stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems, or continue trying to block the law from being implemented?" I put together a pie chart with the results.
It wasn't especially close: a 56% majority wants the Affordable Care Act's opponents to simply move on, while 38% want the right to keep fighting.
The latest Gallup poll, meanwhile, finds less than a third of the public (31%) endorses the Romney/Republican position of fully repealing the entirety of the law.
But wait, there's more.
A new CNN poll, meanwhile, found 50% of respondents agree with the Supreme Court's ruling, and 52% agree with some or all of the health care law. Even when it comes to the much-derided mandate, 48% are fine with it.
What's more, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found support for the law after the ruling went up five points, while opposition went down five points.
To be sure, this is not to say the law is suddenly popular. It isn't. One high court ruling isn't going to overcome three years of deceptive attacks and a misinformation campaign backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.
But if Republicans simply assume that the American mainstream is on board with killing the entirety of the law, they're mistaken.