Poll: Republicans Will Get the Blame if Fiscal Cliff Negotiations Fail

Only 27 percent would blame the President if a deal cannot be made

Republicans in Congress could shoulder most of the blame for failed fiscal cliff negotiations, according to a Washington Post/Pew Poll released Tuesday.

A 53 percent majority of Americans said congressional Republicans would be more to blame if leaders failed to hammer out a deal, while just 27 percent would mostly blame President Barack Obama. While Democrats were the most likely to fault the GOP, about half of independents and 19 percent of Republicans also said they'd blame congressional Republicans.

As the Post's The Fix blog notes, "Those numbers are largely unchanged from a Post-Pew survey conducted three weeks ago and suggest that for all of the back and forth in Washington on the fiscal cliff, there has been little movement in public perception."