A little more than half of American voters attribute gridlock in Washington to Republican obstructionism and not President Barack Obama’s inability to persuade, a poll released Friday found.
According to the latest survey from Quinnipiac University, 51 percent of voters believe gridlock is mainly a result of the congressional GOP’s determination to block any of Obama’s initiatives. A mere 35 percent blamed gridlock on Obama’s lack of “personal skills to convince leaders of Congress to work together.”
Obama has drawn blame from both Republicans and the press for purportedly being too isolated and unwilling to perform the type of cajoling necessary to making a deal in Washington. Chief among those critics has been New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who blamed Obama for the failure of gun legislation in the Senate because he “doesn’t know how to work the system.”
