Poll: Obama Trying Harder Than The GOP To Be Bipartisan

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), President Obama, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)
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Republican leaders warned today that they might skip the White House’s bipartisan health care meeting Feb. 25 because they think President Obama isn’t trying hard enough to be bipartisan on the controversial issue. But a new ABC News poll out today shows that Americans think it’s Republicans who need to try harder to reach across the aisle. Overwhelmingly, they support efforts to find a compromise in health care, rather than scrap reform efforts entirely.

Just 30% of respondents to the poll said that Republican efforts at bipartisanship are “about right.” Fifty-eight percent said the GOP is doing “too little” to work with the their Democratic colleagues. Respondents were more approving of Obama’s attempts to be bipartisan — 45% said his efforts were “about right,” and 44% said they were “too little.”

Among independents, whom the GOP have claimed as their own in the past several months, the support for Obama’s efforts at being bipartisan over the Republican attempts holds. Fifty-six percent said the GOP is doing “too little” to be bipartisan, and 50% said the same about Obama.

The poll shows that a big majority want the parties to work out a bipartisan deal on health care reform, as Obama has advocated. Sixty-three percent said lawmakers should work out a deal and get a reform bill passed, while just 34% said it was time to drop the topic all together.

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