Weigel

This Chart Shows Why Republicans and Democrats Want to Deal on the Top Tax Rate Already

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll mostly finds voters ready for a “compromise” on the hated “fiscal cliff.” But that doesn’t seem like a terribly useful result. People like “spending cuts” until those cuts are made real; they like “getting serious about entitlements” until they realize that Medicare cuts will deny them that vacation home they were saving up for.
This specific question/answer coupling is more useful.
Screen shot 2012-12-13 at 9.53.17 AM A big majority of Republicans are ready to let that top rate go up. These Republican voters are in disagreement with all but seven or eight members of the party in Congress. This is why the “doomsday” plan, for Republicans, involves shrugging, giving up on this, and “denying” it to Democrats as a bargaining chip in 2013.