Who can fix political gridlock? Poll favors Romney

CONNIE CASS

JENNIFER AGIESTA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Just about every­body agrees Wash­ing­ton is a grid­locked mess. But who’s the man to fix it? After two years of brawl­ing and brinkman­ship between Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans, more vot­ers trust Mitt Rom­ney to break the stale­mate, an Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll shows.

Romney’s mes­sage — a vote for Obama is a vote for more grid­lock — seems to be get­ting through. Almost half of likely vot­ers, 47 per­cent, think the Repub­li­can chal­lenger would be bet­ter at end­ing the log­jam, com­pared with 37 per­cent for Obama.

With the race charg­ing into its final week, Rom­ney is push­ing that idea. He increas­ingly por­trays him­self as a get-things-done, work-with-everybody prag­ma­tist, in hopes of con­vinc­ing inde­pen­dent vot­ers that he can over­come Washington’s bit­ter par­ti­san­ship. The AP-GfK poll shows the race in a vir­tual dead heat, with Rom­ney at 47 per­cent to Obama’s 45 per­cent, a dif­fer­ence within the mar­gin of sam­pling error.

At a rally Wednes­day in Coral Gables, Fla., Rom­ney recounted how he worked with the Democratic-led Leg­is­la­ture as gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts and insisted he would find com­mon ground with Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton, too: “We can’t change course in Amer­ica if we keep attack­ing each other. We’ve got to come together and get Amer­ica on track again.”

Obama made his own show of bipar­ti­san­ship Wednes­day, tour­ing super­storm Sandy dev­as­ta­tion along­side Repub­li­can Gov. Chris Christie in New Jer­sey. A major Rom­ney sup­porter, Christie has been prais­ing Obama’s “out­stand­ing” response to the nat­ural disaster.

Obama coun­ters the Wash­ing­ton grid­lock ques­tion by pre­dict­ing that Repub­li­can law­mak­ers focused on oppos­ing his re-election will become more coop­er­a­tive once he wins a sec­ond term and becomes inel­i­gi­ble to run again. Refer­ring to the top Repub­li­cans in Con­gress, Obama joked he would “wash John Boehner’s car” or “walk Mitch McConnell’s dog” to help get a fed­eral deficit-cutting deal.

Obama also argues that Rom­ney is more con­ser­v­a­tive these days than when he was elected gov­er­nor and will find his newer ideas don’t go down eas­ily with Sen­ate Democ­rats. For exam­ple, Rom­ney, who worked with leg­is­la­tors to pass a health care over­haul in Mass­a­chu­setts, has vowed to repeal the Democ­rats’ sim­i­lar national health care law.

In the AP-GfK poll, about 1 out of 6 likely vot­ers didn’t take a side on the grid­lock issue: 6 per­cent weren’t sure who would do a bet­ter job at get­ting Wash­ing­ton mov­ing and 10 per­cent didn’t trust either man to break the impasse among con­gres­sional partisans.

“They all need to be taken by the ear by a grandma,” voter Mar­garet Delaney, 65, said in frustration.

She lives in Janesville, Wis., the home­town of Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Paul Ryan, and she’s lean­ing toward vot­ing for the GOP ticket. But when it comes to end­ing grid­lock, Delaney thinks it may not mat­ter whether Rom­ney or Obama is president.

“I’m not sure either of them can do it,” she said.

A polit­i­cal stand­off last year came close to forc­ing the gov­ern­ment to default on its bills and led Stan­dard & Poor’s to down­grade the United States’ credit rat­ing. Over the past two years, a Con­gress split between Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship posted one of the least pro­duc­tive ses­sions in history.

When law­mak­ers return after Elec­tion Day for a lame-duck ses­sion, they need to work together with Obama to solve some fes­ter­ing trou­bles, includ­ing the “fis­cal cliff” — a loom­ing com­bi­na­tion of higher taxes and spend­ing cuts that could trig­ger another reces­sion if Con­gress doesn’t find a resolution.

If re-elected, Obama will almost cer­tainly face another two years or more of divided gov­ern­ment. Polling in the states sug­gests Repub­li­cans are likely to keep the con­trol of the U.S. House that they won in 2010. And tea par­ty­ers who stymied efforts to reach a deficit-reduction deal seem cer­tain to remain a sub­stan­tial presence.

There’s a good chance that a Pres­i­dent Rom­ney would face a split Con­gress, as well. Democ­rats appear to have an edge in hold­ing onto their Sen­ate major­ity, espe­cially if the pres­i­den­tial race remains close. At least a dozen of the 33 Sen­ate races remain com­pet­i­tive, mak­ing the over­all out­come tough to predict.

Obama also likes to remind Democ­rats and like-minded inde­pen­dent vot­ers that he serves as a check on con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans. The pres­i­dent sug­gests Rom­ney would be unwill­ing to stand up to “the more extreme parts of his party.”

Leigh West­holm of Pen­sacola, Fla., said that’s why she sup­ports Obama’s re-election even though she doesn’t think he will be able to make peace with House Republicans.

“It takes two to tango and he has tried and tried for four years,” West­holm said. “It might be bet­ter for Rom­ney, but I don’t agree with his views.”

But Rom­ney sup­porter Gary Bivins, a 57-year-old West Chester, Ohio, retiree vol­un­teer­ing in his first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, says don’t blame Congress.

A pres­i­dent needs the abil­ity to lead, he said, and “I think Obama has shown no skill in that area.”

The Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK Poll was con­ducted Oct. 19–23 by GfK Roper Pub­lic Affairs and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It involved land­line and cell­phone inter­views with 1,186 adults nation­wide, includ­ing 839 likely vot­ers. Results for the full sam­ple have a mar­gin of sam­pling error of plus or minus 3.5 per­cent­age points, for likely vot­ers it is 4.2 points.

Posted by AP News on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.