It’s not hard to see how this is something 29% of Americans could get behind and 54% would dismiss as whackaloonery.
So, what does this mean about the Tea Party’s potential? I would say it implies: (1) A third-party bid would have some success, but not much more than the Reform Party had (at least the TP isn’t handicapped by being essentially a presidential-campaign vehicle for one charismatic/megalomaniac leader). (2) Achievement of the movement’s real goal, a Tea Party takeover of the GOP, would electorally marginalize the GOP for years to come.
Yeah, the teabaggers are nothing new, they’re just the same wingnut base that’s always been there in the GOP, only now a lot of them are starting to call themselves “independents” because they’re staring to finally figure out that the Republicans always pander to them during elections, but then ignore them when they get in. This is resulting in the baggers doing well in Repblican primaries, andthey will probably win in conservative states, but at a national level the teabagger movement really has no shot. It doesn’t really have a vision, an ideology or a leader todrive it. It’s basically just rooted in anger, and the anger itself isn’t even coherent or focused, it’s a mishmash of mis-aimed economic resentments, religious fanaticism, ignorant paranoias whipped up by the conservative media complex and, without a doubt, no small supply of racism and xenophobia.
Political movements can thrive on hatred if everybody agrees on who to hate and focuses on it, but the teabaggers aren’t really in a position to isolate and focus their hatred and anger on a nationally viable scapegoat.
I think a third party could work, but it would need a compelling leader – a voice and a face, and it would need some kind of positive message or vision. Inarticulate, scattershot rage is not going to work. Somebody needs to offer at least the pretense of a solution – some kind of mythology or image that people can get behind. Racial purity worked for Hitler, but that’s going to only have some limited, regional success for the teabaggers.
Note that the poll indicates support for the TP is up since the last poll they did in the spring. Also, note that more people support the TP than self identify as “liberal”. So, whatever you can say about the TP and it’s policies, the same or more can be said about the liberal block of the Democratic Party.
Well, you could say “so what” about the whole thing. But obviously you thought it was important enough to start a thread about. Your OP focused on the negative aspects of the poll, for obvious reasons. I’m just trying to make sure the full picture is painted.
Well, my thinking is that support for the TP movement as such is maxed out, because it has already reached nearly the full figure for self-ID’d “conservatives” as distinct from “moderates” (see above), and it has no appeal for the moderates. Do you have a different model?
You can slice and dice it to get any answer you want by just asking the right questions. The poll we’re comparing things to is a straight yes or no for support for the TP. In that case, the best comparison is a straight yes or no if you’re liberal.
If you want to slice and dice things more finely., then slice and dice the TP support more finely, too.
Frankly, I think the TP will be history in a few years. They will go the way of Perot.
I’m not too concerned with whether or not support will grow over time. They’ll have their impact on an election cycle or two, show themselves to be ineffective at doing anything, and interest will fade.
That is problematic. It is unclear, still, whether the TP is primarily a religious-conservative movement or a libertarian movement or some strange new alliance of those highly incompatible traditions. The “Contract from America,” quoted in the OP, is strictly economic-libertarian, but polls show social-conservatives predominate in the movement.
I’m surprised it is as high as 29% considering that the tea party is just republicans who are too radical and conservative for the official republican party.
I think they’ve reached saturation. I think like Palin, they come out strong but once the public see what they stand for they will turn on them. At first Palin was liked by almost everyone. As people found out how uninformed, radical, ideological and unqualified she is everyone except the tea party base turned on her.
If they keep putting up candidates who want to force women to give birth to the children of rapists, abolish SS and medicare, promote armed insurection or put up candidates like O’Donnell who talk about the constitution but don’t know what the first amendment is, yes their ratings will go down rather than up. That 29% will probably be 22% in a year.
** (Newser) – A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC shows that support for the tea party movement appears to be slipping, reports the Right Now blog:
* The percentage who hold an unfavorable view of the movement rose from 39% in March to 50%.
* The decline is particularly sharp among 18- to 29-year-olds, whose views shifted from a positive 43%-38% to a negative 27%-60%.
* 45% of white Southerners have an unfavorable view, up from 30%.
**
So it isn’t a national movement. More of a fringe movement that only appeals to the base of the GOP.
That’s about the same as Sarah Palin’s approval rating, which makes sense. Well, it doesn’t make sense in an absolute sense, but it makes sense that the two numbers would be close.
As much as I hate to defend CD, she was right about the 1st amendment-- at least the part about SoCaS.
There has been a RW meme circulating for years now that the 1st Amendment does not separate church from state, or that the amendment is intended only to protect church from state and not the reverse, or something like that. See here. O’Donnell appears to have imbibed that intellectually dishonest meme without realizing that it refers to construction of an actual part of the Constitution.
