I don’t know any. Hell, the only people I know who even vote Republican are pretty moderate, or non-ideologically inclined (ie., they work for defense contractors, so the GOP is good for business, and the like).
Based on previous conversations about politics I suspect that at least one of my Idaho relatives would identify as a Tea Partier but since I haven’t actually spoken to them since the Tea Party came to be I voted 0.
None that I am aware of.
I work with several. One has a “Taxed Enough Already” Bumpersticker on her Land Rover. Right next to her AOPA (Aircraft Owner/Pilot Association) sticker. If it weren’t for those pesky taxes she could be doing all right I guess.
There are numerous stickers that say Taxed Enough Already, but for flags, it’s the old “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.
My best friend from college and her husband are sort-of Tea Partiers. I say sort-of because neither comes close to believing all the things Tea Partiers are alleged to believe. The friend-in-law, for instance, is given to mocking birthers, Christian extremists, and anti-gay forces on his blog, and the direct-friend gets very annoyed when I tell her that Sarah Palin is going to be elected president in 2012, saying that as much as she dislikes Obama, she will have to volunteer for him if Palin gets the Republican nomination.
I live in the biggest Republican strong hold in California- Bakersfield. I live across the street from a city councilwoman whose garage is filled to the brim with pro Palin signs, just to give you a little perspective.
Yeah, I know tea partiers. Lots. In fact, a lot of my clients (folks with back tax problems) openly talk about being anti Obama and big Tea Party members. The best time was when this lady and her husband sat there with big grins on their faces, telling me that they were really into tea bagging. 
None of my friends are tea partiers, but I have more than 10 acquaintances that self identify as such. If we include all the clients and folks at various events I’ve met with that have mentioned identifying themselves that way, I’d say that number is well over 100 in the last year.
Woo! Bakersfield! FWIW: I’m super liberal, so it’s not like I hang out at Tea Party events or anything. These folks just pop out of the wood work without me even looking.
My father, my sister, and my brother in law all state that they’re not members of the Tea Party, but that they align themselves with them. I’m not sure precisely what the distinction is there, but for purposes of this poll, I counted the three of them as Tea Partiers.
It’s difficult to pin down just what “Tea Party” means, since the only thing the Tea Partiers have in common is that they’re at the extreme end of the Republican party… But they’re all extreme in different directions. The only reason that they’re considered one group is that all of the individual members assume that all the others are extreme in the same direction.
I didn’t count him in my Tea Party Friends, but my next door neighbor has an American flag and a Gasden flag (with “National Rifle Association” printed on it) flying side-by-side. I’ve never engaged him in conversation beyond the normal pleasantries necessary when I’m delivering his gun catalogs that have been mistakenly put in my mailbox.
Taxed Enough Already (TEA?) would probably do it, but I wouldn’t say that the flag definitely makes one a Tea Partier. I have a Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”) t-shirt, and I’m about as liberal as they come.
Ah yes. It’s the No True Teapartier Paradigm.
While you’re right, I’ve only seen the Gadsden Flag (I love that I just learned the real name of that) at houses with a ton of right-wing stuff out front (Arpaio and Montgomery signs; a giant “ILLEGAL IS ILLEGAL” sign, etc.).
I used to be the lone democrat in my large group of republicans I worked with, now I am the lone NON-Tea Partier.
I know one whom I know is one. There’s another who squawks like one, but I don’t know for sure.
There are a few in my neighborhood. My upstairs neighbor is running for NH House so my yard looks like a polling station. My town is very into the next election so it’s hard not to notice. I can’t tell my upstairs neighbor that I’m not voting for Lynch or some of the other career politicians. Like many others I want to see our states budget deficit go down, not up. There is a guy running who can get the job done and is proven to reduce waste. I’m sorry but the free ride is over for the free spenders. All in all I like what the Tea Party is doing. They are getting people involved and making people read up on the candidates track records. For the young and disenfranchised The Tea Party is right on time.
BTW- I’m not a tea partier, yet, but everyone I voted for came in on primary day except one due to tea party influence. I’m an Independent, Democrat or Republican, depending on who is the best candidate. This primary was the best I have seen in years. I remain hopeful that our country can and will pull itself out of the muck and mire. With the right House and Senate to break up the good old boy network it could begin to happen. We really need to know all we can about who we are electing based on their track records. Also there backrounds, religion and everything needs to be out in the open. Government should always be transparent to the voters. Not hidden. I think Kennedy said that.
The CHANGE we need to see is in the White House, It’s like a dirty diaper and it stinks. Most of America is figuring that out. They also are voting that way. Fooled me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
I feel a rant coming on so if your a Liberal go stick your head in the sand. You don’t want to hear this.
We all are going to pay someday, somehow, for the mistakes of the past. No political party can keep us from what we all owe to big gov. It’s going to hurt to try and get out of debt as anyone who has gone through bankruptcy will tell you. Our country is bankrupt! Yes, we are all going to pay from the top on down. We can’t spend money like play money anymore and need to cut back very deeply before we get out of debt. My state may get an income tax. It still beats having China own us. I bet China would fix the economy real fast but I don’t want to be a communist or be in a rice patty or working for 10 dollars a day in a sweat shop. It’s just a matter of mathematics. Can’t we find one person in our vast country that can mathematically show us a way out without any cheating? We may not like it but we created the mess by electing bad people and now it needs to be cleaned up.
It’s a scary thought for some people to have to cut back and shoulder the burden our elected officials put upon us but we are Americans and we can take it. Sure some people will jump off buildings like during the great depression but that just thins the herd. I’ll be damned if I am going to let my country go to hell and do nothing to save it. My eyes are wide open like Pelosi’s and I’m not drinking the political coffee just doing my own homework. It’s pretty bad when you can’t trust what people say anymore. You need to look at their track record. All of it. If they hide anything don’t vote for them. They need to be honest and upfront. If they have no track record or it’s spotty, look deeper.
I’m not a Tea Partier, Yet, but I do have it in me to join if things don’t change real soon. I don’t want to go down in history as being the Baby Boomer generation that bankrupted, “The former United States of America”. I’m too old to be a good slave. I love my Freedom and Liberty too much to let some jackasses in Washington sell my children’s inheritance and our country down the river.
And to what end? I still don’t understand why politicians want to break our country? We once, not so long ago were such a strong nation? People had pride and worked hard and we excelled in so many areas like manufacturing, science and electronics. We had it good and then we systematically destroyed all the good we had worked so hard for …Why? It defies logic? Build up just to destroy it?
What is the governments real motive? Is it greed? If it is it’s not working. I just don’t get it and politics is broken so I may just have to join the Tea Party and see if we can’t fight to take back Washington, old school style. It seems like its the only way that people ever get their rights is by rising up against the government. In the last hundred or so years women got the right to vote by standing up and marching, same with slavery, now it’s political corruption. Time to march and picket and whatever I need to do to put a stop to this corrupt regime of lying weasels.
It is our God given right as citizens of this country to be heard yet people feel afraid of the Tea Party. Puleeze. That is just what the media wants you to think. It’s all the elected people that we need to be afraid of. The people who are bought and paid for in Washington by whomever it is that is trying to ruin our country. That is just my guess. Nixon spoke of an Evil Empire and perhaps this is what he meant? It’s pretty bad and I would say it’s evil.
Evil is only extinguished when it is brought into the light. We the people have been kept in the dark for too long. We need a transparent government and have our say in things that are voted on. Right now we can’t trust those we elect to do that so we need a radical change. This country belongs to each and every one of us. It’s our birthright. Washington has forgotten that and plays us like a 20 dollar hooker and yet we cower? I’m stronger and smarter then cowering to some pimp called big gov! I’m tired of being talked down to like I’m one of Jerry’s kids. I have a voice and so do many other folks they just need to find it. We impeached Nixon for being a lying weasel and we can do it again with real statesmen in Washington.
The irony is incredible when you really think about the last decade. The complete and total dumbing down of America has arrived and yet we are still in denial. I turn on the tv and it makes me sad. Elections have turned into American Idol. So now we have reality politics and we feel that is ok?
I suggest you all rent the movie, “Idiocracy” which came out in 2006 or 7 and watch it now. It was a sleeper then but now it is just plain ironic. Some of you that didn’t understand it back then may actually enjoy it now. It is bizarrely real. One thing that is for certain, This train is off the tracks and we need some strong people to right it or we are going to end up in 2050 drinking Brondo.
The Tea Party is looking better all the time.
-End rant-
I know several. However they are not 56% of Americans (unless the question was something extremely generic like ‘do you support the constitution and tax cuts’)
Tea Party members are people too conservative for the current republican party, people who think the GOP is too liberal and bipartisan. That is pretty much the entire movement.
An amalgam of nativists, libertarians, social conservatives and ‘angry white people’. But they were like that before 2009.
Perciful, you need to read this article if you’re under the impression that the “Tea Party” is the answer to any intelligible question.
The problem is that the tea party does not offer viable solutions to these problems. The tea party, to a large degree, is a movement designed to push policies designed to benefit the capital class and investor class. The Tea party opposes gov. intervention in health care, but private companies who make money in the current system fund the movement. The Koch brothers fund opposition to environmental laws like cap/trade. Fundamentally much of what the tea party pushes for is designed to economically benefit the powerful. They have no solutions.
How would the tea party balance the budget? Many push for massive tax cuts, so where will spending cuts come from? Even the GOP with their new ‘contract’ admitted they have no idea how to cut spending. They won’t cut mandatory spending and will only cut non-defense discretionary spending. THat is only 1/5 or so of the federal budget.
Not only that, but many tea partiers are on welfare or benefit from it. Many are on medicare or social security. Nearly all have a public education. They all drive on public roads, benefit from the military and police, benefit from public scientific research, etc.
So to many of us, the tea party is a movement of people who collect welfare and public spending and are in denial about it, who have their nativist and conservative ideals manipulated to make them support policies designed to benefit the wealthy and powerful. They aren’t standing up against the powerful and influential, they are being led by the powerful and influential who work with and on their conservative ideals to get them to push policies designed to benefit themselves.
Obama did try to cut the budget by passing health reform. Making health care more efficient will keep our country solvent. The fact that the tea party so heavily opposes reform to health care makes me think they don’t ‘really’ care about the deficit. If they did, they’d understand and care that health reform is one of the most important ways to fight the deficit.
Like it or not, 69 million citizens, including myself, voted for Obama and an overwhelming majority of democrats in congress. There are millions in the US who disagree with me, and there are millions who do agree with me. The 69 million people who put Obama in office didn’t ‘take your country away from you’. They outvoted you and all the other conservatives.
The debt is a problem, but after the economy recovers and taxes are made more equitable it should be more manageable. But that could take years.
Though I know some people who sympathize with the movement, I don’t know a single person who has gone to a Tea Party event.
I’m sympathetic to many of the Tea Partiers’ goals and so are most of my friends… but none of us has the time, energy or inclination to take part in their activities. People with jobs and families generally DON’T take part in political rallies, regardless of their beliefs.