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Republican leadership have made it extremely clear they don't think shutting down the government unless President Obama defunds Obamacare is a good idea. They argue the Senate wouldn't pass a bill funding the government that defunded Obamacare, and Obama wouldn't sign it, and, besides, a shutdown would make the GOP so unpopular it could lose its majority in the House. Conservative groups demanding a shutdown don't have much of a case against the first two points, but they're working on facts to dispute the third. A new poll by the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation argues a shutdown wouldn't risk the House.
The Heritage Action poll is being used to try and woo lawmakers from both sides of the aisle by suggesting that their constituents are comfortable with the idea of blocking Obamacare by shutting down the government. Heritage Action's pollster: "There is no present evidence that a move to defund Obamacare, and the potential of a partial government shutdown, would harm Republican prospects of holding the House majority." Those members of Congress whose districts were polled (ten in total) would be advised not to jump into action based on the data. The questions in the poll were loosely crafted to allow the most possible support for the idea of a "temporary slowdown in non-essential federal government operations" in order to halt the "full and immediate implementation of the Obama health care plan." And even then the tally was close.