Or, put another way, while they dislike regulation as a whole or as a concept, they like what regulation does and, if pressed on individual regulatory areas, are likely (as they consider specific problems and abuses) to support the current or expanded regulatory burden.
It's an interesting tension, alongside the policy-vs-morality post I had yesterday; specific regulations (policy) are approved of, but regulation conceptually (morality) is a dirty word. Thus Dems push forward individual regulations that they know people like, but are frustrated by GOPers who simply summarize them as "government overreach" and "job-killing regulations." GOPers are similarly frustrated when people cheers their regulation-clearing rhetoric, but then balk when actual regulations are unwound. #ddtb
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Americans Like Regulation
By James Kwak It’s a well-known fact that Americans oppose government spending in the abstract yet favor virtually every government spending program. For example, last April Gallup reported t…