Tea Party linkfest!

[allisnow]

10 days left until another round of Tax Day Tea Parties take place across the country, and there's some interesting polls out regarding the Tea Party movement.

Ed at Hot Air pretty much says it perfectly, so I'm just going to piggyback on him.

For the past few months, media outlets have described Tea Party followers as racist, reactionary, Birthers, and just about every insult one could find in the dictionary. CNN’s Anderson Cooper helped popularize a sexual slur as a description for the group that others in the media continue to use: teabaggers. However, a new poll by the Winston Group of a thousand registered voters returned some surprising results, including the fact that 13% of the Tea Party followers are Democrats:

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people — said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.” …

The group is united around two issues – the economy/jobs and reducing the deficit. They believe that cutting spending is the key to job creation and favor tax cuts as the best way to stimulate the economy. That said 61 percent of Tea Party members believe infrastructure spending creates jobs. Moreover, given the choice Tea Party members favor 63-32 reducing unemployment to 5 percent over balancing the budget.

Racist, reactionary, teabagging Democrats, I guess...

Then Gallup has a poll showing that Tea Party's are actually a pretty decent demographic representation of America:

Tea Party supporters skew right politically; but demographically, they are generally representative of the public at large. That's the finding of a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted March 26-28, in which 28% of U.S. adults call themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Interestingly, a Rasmussen poll puts the Tea Party movement up against Obama himself:

On major issues, 48% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.

Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly feel closer to the Tea Party and most Democrats say that their views are more like Obama’s. Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 50% say they’re closer to the Tea Party while 38% side with the President.

The Tea Party vs Congress numbers are more laughable: 47% to 26%.

Dan Quayle is worried about the Tea Party 'going Perot', i.e. becoming a spoiler in upcoming elections.

There's a well-worn path of third-party movements in American history, and it leads straight to a dead end. A cause gathers strength, and its message speaks to millions; then, amid the excitement, a new political party is born, only to perform poorly on Election Day and disappear a cycle or two later. In practice, all that's achieved is a fragmenting of the vote, usually to the benefit of whichever major party the movement had set out to oppose.

Personally, I'm not pro Tea Party-Party. I think Dan is essentially correct about 3rd parties; we've seen it happen in the past. I would rather the TP movement focus on influencing the existing party that they most resemble ideologically, which is the GOP. If these numbers are anything to go by, maybe Dan should be warning the Republican Party not to 'go Perot'.

Comments

[jimkeller24.livejournal.com]

So, to sum it up - the average Tea Party supporter is a financially comfortable conservative guy in his fifites.

For my taste, they're a little too extreme. If you read the wikipedia article, it basically sounds like they're against everything. You know I'm usually pretty liberal, but I also know when comes to fiscal issues, I tend to be very conservative. But these guys just scare me.

And seriously, while I agree the health-care reform isn't the best ever drafted, I just don't get how it's a bad thing to give uninsured people insurance. Every health-care system in every other industrialized nation of the world works precisely like, I'll say it, obamacare. And it's a good thing to just be able to go the doctor, have him check you you out, prescribe you some pills and know that at the end of the day, you're neither gonna be in debt nor thrown out of your insurance.

All that aside, I totally love your layout. :)

[zanev.livejournal.com]

I'm not just saying this because I'm a libertarian but I don't think the tea party is going to do much of anything. Congress, no matter who runs it don't care about protests or movements.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Quayle is a much smarter guy than he was generally ever given credit for. He makes a very good point.

tea parties etc

[ashgirl2.livejournal.com]

I am a
supporter of the Tea Party movement, though i have not yet been able to attend one. I don't fit the polls findings. I am a 57 year old female lifelong Democrat. I do not think very many of the Tea Party
supporters will go the third party route. Too many poeple fell for that with Perot. The Tea Partiers (many of them like me) also are concerned about the administrations incompetence in creating jobs, facing the threat of terrorists (the idiotic plan to try the terrorists in civilian court in
New York City for instance). Oh and illegal immigration. Yeah Arizona!
I wish every state would pass a law like that. I'm looking forward to November eagerly to help vote hopefully everyone possible that voted for the health care atrocity. And the 2012 election cannot come soon enough.
The thought of the damage to be done to our counry till then is frightening. I've had discussions with liberals on the net recently and they all seem to think the Tea Party supporters will forget before the Nov election. No, we are far to angry to forget.

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