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Title: Survey: Tea Party Less Popular Than Atheists, Muslims -- But It Still Runs The Republican Party
Source:
MLIVE
URL Source: http://www.mlive.com/politics/index ... tea_party_less_popular_th.html
Published: Aug 22, 2011
Author: MLIVE
Post Date: 2011-08-22 13:04:46 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 1963
Comments: 1
The Tea Party has plummeted in popularity in recent months, with new research showing the movement rates lower than 23 other groups of Americans, including atheists and Muslims. And yet the Tea Party runs the modern-day Republican Party, which bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower, which many of us still long to vote for. And the Tea Party gets to dictate the terms of the jobs, budget, spending and deficit debates in Washington. David E. Campbell, an associate professor of political science at Notre Dame, and Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, have been collecting data on the American political attitudes since 2006. They write that the Tea Party is nothing new -- and wields undue political influence, given it small and unpopular membership. They note than a new New York Times/CBS poll shows only 14 percent back the Tea Party and 40 percent oppose it, as I reported earlier. That's down from 21 percent popularity in April. "Given how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics," Campbell and Putnam write. "But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic." I've interviewed dozens of Tea Party activists at rallies over the last couple years. Many of them insist that it's not an appendage of the Republican Party and they're independents. But Campbell and Putnam put that idea to rest. Aug. 16, New York Times: Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today. What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters. So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do. More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. So Tea Partiers are not libertarians, but members of the religious right, which explains the undue fascination of newly elected Republicans in Michigan and across the country with abortion legislation. And most Americans, however much they've suffered during the Great Recession, haven't decided to hold angry rallies donning powdered wigs and funny hats while spewing laughably inaccurate accounts of American history. Nor do they hold the Tea Party in high regard. But Republicans in office have fooled themselves that the Tea Party is America, either because they're far-right and love the message or they're reasonable and scared of losing their jobs. Of course, Tea Partiers will just reject this research as the "biased" work of evil, liberal professors and the New York Times. But sooner or later, voters are going to wake up to the fact that this group is running everything and doesn't represent much of what the majority does. That will be a rude awakening.
Nice work if you can get it.
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#1. To: Brian S, *Extended Clip Progressives* (#0)
a new New York Times/CBS poll They're only polling atheists and Muslims.
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
atheists and Muslims.
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
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