Minimum support

A few posts back I wrote that the Republicans must have polling showing that the general public thinks increasing the minimum wage is more important than Republicans and their backers believed. And it's true.

There is a CBS/NY Times poll out that shows 85 percent of the nation supports increasing the minimum wage and only 13 percent are against it. (Go to page 28 of the poll to find the question)

The fact that 94 percent of Democrats support increasing the minimum wage is not a problem for the Republicans. Nor is the fact that even 75 percent of Republicans support it. The big problem for the Republicans in this poll is that 84 percent of Independents support raising it too.

Those darn Independents making us do things we don't want to do!

Of course then there is the little matter of Congress accepting a raise for themselves, which the poll did not take into account. Nor did it measure whether or not Congress will get credit for voting for the raise only because they fought to get the wealthiest of the wealthy a tax break as a condition of increasing the minimum wage.

But I'm sure someone is working on those polls too. Somehow, I don't think 84 percent of the Independents are going to support those moves.