Mark Tapscott of The Washington Examiner suggests in a new column that the president has done nothing to justify his belief that the public is with him on the federal debt-limit issue:

For a long time, Obama’s immense likability provided insulation against growing public anger about the policies and programs he and the Democratic majority that controlled the 111th Congress put in place.

But, thanks to the stimulus program’s failure, ramming through of Obamacare, and exploding federal spending and debt, even his personal appeal was insufficient to prevent stunning Republican off-year gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey in 2009, Republican Scott Brown’s shocking upset in January 2010 to capture Sen. Teddy Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts, and the GOP onslaught in the November 2010 off-year congressional election that threw Nancy Pelosi out of the House Speakership and sharply narrowed the Democrats’ hold on the Senate. …

… In the face of such obvious and sustained voter rejection, prudent politicians would moderate their positions and rhetoric, but Obama instead doubled down on the issue most central to protecting the Washington liberal establishment, federal taxes, spending and debt. It also happens to be the issue on which Obama is most out of step with America.

In the wake of the disastrous 2010 election, Obama adroitly worked a compromise with congressional Republicans on a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts.

But in the months since then, he has grown progressively more intransigent that spending cuts not touch the vast majority of federal programs, even as taxes are hiked, tax credits closed and the national debt limit increased from its present $14.3 trillion.

Then in a well-publicized White House confrontation with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor this week, Obama dared Republicans to call his bluff and threatened that he’s “going to the American people with this.”

A raft of new public opinion surveys suggest that Republicans should tell Obama to go for it because he is on the wrong end of the debate.