The painful price of "compassionate conservatism"

Salon.com:

The newest numbers are significant, but hardly surprising: Nearly 60 percent of Americans now say they don't like the Medicare overhaul plan that nearly every congressional Republican -- and not a single Democrat -- has lined up behind, while barely a third say they favor it. The findings, from a CNN poll released on Wednesday, mesh with other recent surveys and with a long accepted truism -- that Americans (and senior citizens in particular) really, really like Medicare and really, really don't like politicians messing with it.

But congressional Republicans have no choice but to mess with it (or to look like they're trying to mess with it) because their political base, restive Tea Party activists and sympathizers, is demanding it -- and that base proved in 2010 that it is willing to prioritize ideological purity over incumbency, establishment support and electability when picking candidates in primaries.

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