Blocking Health Care Reform is Not a Winner for Grassley

Across the right wing blogosphere, conservatives are rubbing their hands with glee. They think the Republican strategy of blocking real health care reform is beginning to pay off. To quote [1]Senator Jim DeMint, "If we are able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." For conservatives, failure is victory.

Their celebration is just a touch premature [2].

For one thing, they should be careful not to lose sight of their own. Senator Grassley, who at one time commanded strong bipartisan support in his home state of Iowa, is losing ground.

Amidst his high-profile role in the national debate over health care, his approval rating has declined to 57 percent according to the latest Selzer / Des Moines Register poll [3]. On the face of it, this does not look too bad. However, it represents an 18-point decline since the start of the year.

More importantly, as the table below clearly illustrates, it seems he is really losing ground with Democrats. Independents' approval ratings have also dropped 11 points since April. The once-Republican state has changed markedly since Senator Grassley was first elected in 1980, it is split almost exactly evenly between Democrats (34%), Republicans (33%) and Independents (33%). The upshot is that Senator Grassley can’t afford to lose the support of his Democratic and Independent constituents.

Source: Nate Silver [4]

It is little wonder then, according to New York Times [5], “Mr. Grassley, who often has been at the center of creating major legislation, instead mostly kept his head down on Tuesday, reading news clippings and his Kindle as the Senate Finance Committee began work on legislation to overhaul the health care system.”

Senator Grassley is rattled and so he should be.