Utah Is No Fan of Lee’s Obamacare-Linked Shutdown Strategy

LEE

The tide of public opinion is turning against the GOP’s gambit of insisting on Obamacare defunding in return for keeping the government open — even in states such as Utah, home to one of the move’s top champions, Sen. Mike Lee.

A Deseret News poll found that 56 percent of Utahans do not believe that shutting down the government is worth the continued fight to cut funding from Obamacare, while only 37 percent agreed that it is. An almost equal amount of people blamed Congressional Republicans as they did President Barack Obama, but the plurality of those polled — 41 percent — blamed both parties.

Lee, along with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has spearheaded the effort to tie government funding to a dismantling of the nation’s health care law, much to the chagrin of establishment Republicans who are worried about the party being blamed for the shutdown and the economic consequences that could come with it.

That the maneuver polled so poorly with people in Utah just one week into a shutdown could be bad news for both Lee and the conservatives who are continuing to push Republicans to stand strong against a policy-rider-free continuing resolution.

The Deseret News, which is operated by the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, reported that the margin of error for the poll was 5 points.

http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/lees-push-obamacare-linked-shutdown-not-favored-in-utah/