Published: April 14, 2010
Tea party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, tend to be Republican, white, male, and married, and their strong opposition to the Obama administration is more rooted in political ideology than anxiety about their personal economic situation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
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RENEGADE EYE
28 comments:
The Irony of course is they are a Minority who think they are a Majority (even if we look at them just in terms of sheer numbers)
Such a group exists here in the UK although they are not as organised & socially distinct.
It's good to look at The Right in such detail rather than lumping them together in one mass category.
Know Your Enemy!
49% are Republican, 42% INDEPENDENT, 8% Democrat.
70% are conservative, 22% moderate, 7% liberal.
This is according to the Gallup Poll, which is probably the impetus behind the latest NY Times study. No doubt the Gallup findings made the Times folks want to find a way to marginalize the Tea Party. It won't work. Had the Times bothered to look into the movement instead of putting out hit pieces and agitprop, they would have found out before Gallup that the movement, while predominantly conservative, is not a monolithic entity.
What matters isn't the actual size of the Tea Party movement so much as what the Tea Party movement represents. It's a mirror of the current mood of Americans in general. The current mood of Americans is not good, to put it lightly, and that 42% Independent number is a very important barometer. If it keeps up, Obama and the Democrats are toast.
This is precisely why the Times is a fucking joke and will probably go under sometime during most of our lifetimes.
It's not a news organization anymore, it is a political gadfly, little better than Pravda. Actually, Pravda probably at least had some entertainment value even during the Stalin era.
They don't reflect my mood, or the mood of anyone I know. They reflect the paranoid, anti-intellectual strain of American politics that has been with us since the days of the Know-Nothings.
I just read the baggers' proposed Contract from America. It's pathetically naive. A Congress full of Ron Pauls wouldn't pass a balanced budget amendment, and yet they let the Dick Armeys of right-wing politics yank their chain and separate them from their wallets over that one time and again.
If a balanced budget amendment is so sacred to the Republican party, how come they didn't push for one when they were in power? Because they were too busy fighting two wars off the books and spending money hand over fist.
K-
The Tea Party people aren't necessarily fans of the Republican Party. They certainly don't support most of the Republican leadership. For example, they have a grave dislike of Lindsey Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, among many many others. None of those people were invited to speak at any of the Tea party rallies, for very good reason. They would not be welcome there. In fact, a large percentage of these people dislike the Republican leadership as much if not more than they do Democrats, precisely because of what you pointed out-they feel the GOP leadership has betrayed them, giving lip service to their values to get financial support and votes, and then turning their backs on them.
In 2006, one reason the Democrats won that election cycle was in large part because a significant portion of the GOP base did not turn out to vote for the Republican candidates, including especially some incumbents. Some even voted for people they assumed were being truthful when they described themselves as "conservative Democrats".
The Republican and Independent voters who were responsible for that GOP defeat are, to a large extent, the same people you see showing up at these Tea-Parties events. They've made it quite clear they are not going to put up with the beltway, establishment Republicans yanking their chains again.
That is including a large number who are mad at Bush, by the way, because of unfunded mandates, including the wars, but other things as well. It's a more complicated process than you are being led to believe. Part of the reason for their anger, which is livid, has to do with mistrust of the political establishment in general, and that is including the GOP, or at least, the establishment, party elites among the GOP. They don't trust them any further than they could throw them.
That may not be wholly accurate though, because some of those GOP leaders they could easily and gladly throw a good long way.
A good example of what this portends is to be seen in the current race for the GOP Senate nomination between Crist, the GOP establishment candidate, and the conservative candidate who is supported by the Tea Party. I can't think of his name right now, but he is trouncing Crist, the establishment GOP candidate, in the polls and will probably win the GOP nomination the way things stand.
The Tea-Party isn't just a war against Democrats, its a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party.
Such right-wing groupings as the "Tea-baggers", are a recurring phenomena in American politics going back to establishment of the American Republic. Someone mentioned the "Know-Nothings" of the 1850s as an example of that tradition. I think that is not a bad approximation, especially on the anti-immigrant, close the borders, sent the blacks back to Africa, and hide your head in the sand while Wall Street takes us on a another roller-coaster ride front. However, another look at those demographics tells me a different story. These people are not going to lead a counter-revolution. Retired, rich, white people who have not even gotten back from Florida, or other of the world sun-tanning spots yet, are not, in the end, up to that task. It is the forces that they might support, or do now support, like the expanding militia movements, where the danger lies. And why we have to "know thy enemy". No question,
Same old reactionary Republican base minus the fanatical religious message, or at least that's kept undercover not to scare the horses.
I've been listening to rightist talk radio. About this poll, Rush Limbaugh took a similar stand as Pagan, while Laura Ingraham thought the poll was complimentary.
I think the evidence shows, this is the Republican base we're talking about. It's a product if Dick Armey.
What Obama should fear most, is a labor party being established.
I disagree with Pagan. They are solid Republican.
Disagree all you want, I gave you the Gallup poll numbers in my first comment. There's almost as many independents as Republicans, and most of the Republicans Tea-Partiers are mad at the Republican Party leadership and want to change it. They want to take it over.
It's a revolution against the Republican Party apparatus in other words. That's why you have the Republican Party's preferred candidate for the GOP Senate nomination in Florida-Charlie Crist-being trounced at the polls by the Tea-Party candidate, Marco Rubio, so badly Crist is rumored to be considering running as an independent.
You have the same thing going on all over, including Kentucky, where the Tea Party also have a candidate they support for Senate to take Jim Bunnings seat. Mitch McConnell and the GOP party leadership support Trey Grayson, the Ky Secretary of State.
But the Tea-Party (and Bunning, who is retiring, and despises McConnell) support Rand Paul, who is the son of Ron Paul.
Guess who's leading in the polls by a large margin? Yep, Rand Paul is trouncing Greyson, the "establishment" candidate.
This is going on all over the country. These are rank-and-file Republicans wanting to take the party back from the leadership of the Republican Party.
But the Tea-Party is more than that. They wouldn't be a danger to Obama and the Democrats in their own right. Where the danger lies to the Dems is in the presence of such a large number of independents. If those independents stay with the tea-party and vote Republican in the 2010 mid-terms, there's going to be a lot of crying and hair pulling and teeth gnashing, because its going to be a game changer.
It doesn't say what percentage of them are nuts.
I must confess to not being intimately acquainted with the ‘Tea party’ but what does strike me is that any time those perceived to be on the ‘right’ have concerns they wish to voice about the government they are dismissed as illegitimate, cranks, criminals and terrorists by the ‘left’ even when the concerns are being channeled through peaceful democratic means whereas any time the ‘left’ have an issue with the government they want to agitate and organize for a revolution, that is to violently overthrow it, by means that would most certainly popularly be described as terrorist, criminal, extremist and demented.
Renegade Eye, I know you for one long for ‘revolution’ just about anywhere and everywhere on this blog and I know that several of the others here, at the very least, are of the same mind too.
How do you guys justify this belief in non-democratic violence as a political solution whilst condemning democratic movements?
Sentinel-
I think they condemn it because they know it has more popular support than they can ever achieve in a developed and advanced nation.
White Rabbit-
"It doesn't say what percentage of them are nuts."
You must not have read the poll I showed that was conducted by Gallup. If you had, you would have gotten your answer as to the percentage of nuts in the Tea-Party. But just to save you the trouble of scrolling back up.
Democrats-8%
Liberals-7%
Hope that helps.
Pagan: Kentucky politics is more colorful than Minnesota's, except for the quirky Ventura, Franken types here.
That is interesting about Bunning. He holds on.
I was aware of Glen Beck calling Romney socialist. He better beware that attacking the GOP establishment, can have consequences.
I think their role will be clearer in the next few months.
Perot had more independents.
Sentinel: I have found rightist historians, don't know what a revolution is about. They only concentrate on the military side.
Trotsky declared revolution as, "as the moment when the masses, that is to say, the millions of ordinary men and women, begin to participate in politics, to take their lives and destinies into their own hands. Revolution stirs up society to the bottom, and mobilizes layers that were previously inert and "non-political."
Revolution can only occur after institutions are discredited.
White Rabbit: They came to town hall meetings armed. With no real program, they'll probably split into factions. Balancing the budget will not happen in this capitalist crisis.
Well Sentinel, it's unfortunate that about all the Baggers are expressing is a desire to get back to supply side (i.e. tinkle down) economics and establishing "drill baby drill" as a comprehensive energy policy.
They are totally unwilling to examine the sources of the current deficit (Bush tax cuts, Iraq/Afghanistan on the books, housing market bust recession) and think it can be chalked up to the stimulus.
You get a lot of dishonest nonsense like claiming the bailouts are completely an Obama initiative.
It's a disorganized mess with no useful ideas whatsoever.
Ducky’s here,
Fully integrated with democracy and democratic principles all the same rather then a movement planning and agitating to violently overthrow the government.
As I said, I am not intimately acquainted with this movement as it is rather beyond the scope of my sphere of interest, but I can quite obviously say that your rendering down of its objectives and rationale into two short paragraphs of scorn is just one view and through a polarized lens at that.
I think that is fair to say.
In my experience of life, nothing is ever that black and white and no is ever 100% right or wrong.
I am sure Pagan Temple could just as easily provide the counter points to your points.
Sentinel-
"Drill Baby Drill" is nothing but a slogan, it is not a comprehensive energy policy nor was it ever intended to be. Most conservatives encourage developing alternative forms of energy in addition to further oil exploration and drilling, and they also encourage clean coal technology and nuclear energy, something that makes most leftists like Ducky wet their pants.
Another thing is the Tea-Party people and many other conservatives were mad at Bush over his role in the stimulus, and they were also mad at McCain for going along with it. That's why a lot of Republicans stayed home in 2008. Nobody that I know of has ever claimed the bailouts started with Obama. They know they started with Bush and they were pissed off at him about that and about other things over the years.
You see, Sentinel, people on the Left like the Duck go into paroxysms of rage, foaming at the mouth, crazy as a shithouse rat insane and blabber unhinged gibberish at the very thought of Bush.
Because they are so overcome with such insane hatred of him, they automatically and wrongly assume people on the Right love him and worship him just as much as they hate him.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Since you are British, I'll tell you exactly what most people on the left are like, in a way you will probably understand if you know much British history.
Do you remember hearing about how during the Victorian Era, insane people were locked in cages, and for a dollar or two aristocrats could tour the facilities and get a good laugh at how the poor insane creatures would gibber and rant if they poked them with their walking sticks?
Well, if you do, now just imagine in your minds eye substituting those aristocrat's cruel, poking sticks with words like Bush and Israel, and you can see me having my sadistic fun with them. My goal is that somewhere alone the way maybe I can wake up two or three of them to the reality that they are, after all, crazy as shithouse rats.
If I can just get one to realize that fact, I can honestly feel like I have made a contribution to the greater good in some small way.
Thanks Pagan. Too true.
People on the ‘left’ reactively place me on the ‘right’ and of course assume that I just have to have supported Bush etc as well when nothing could have been further from the truth: That village idiot was the most transparent placeman and sock puppet in living memory and found it hard to even speak let alone lead and his wholly unjustified behind-the-scenes directed corporate and ‘realpolitik’ actions filtered down to my poodle government and cost the lives of a good few friends.
But that ‘right’ = a predetermined set of values and beliefs is the very prejudicial fuel of the left’s animosity towards (as Tony puts it) their ‘enemy’ and it is deliberately sustained as such lest common ground be forged and the dictate of violent overthrow over the democratic mandate of the people be exposed for the nasty fraud it really is.
So it has been in history with the ‘left’ deriding the ‘right’ for oppression and ignorance of the masses when the reality is that I cannot name one overtly radical socialist regime that hasn’t achieved power by terrorism rather then the ballot box.
Even Hitler was legally elected by the mandate of the people whereas Lenin was sneaked back to Russia in a sealed train through Germany backed and financed by foreign powers to wage a terrorist campaign in order to secure a murderous dictatorship.
(By the way the Asylum you speak of was called Bedlam (now Bethlem) and still operates as a mental hospital, albeit a modern one. I have had the misfortune of having to visit a former comrade suffering from severe PTSD at that place several times now.)
Sentinel-
I've bee meaning to ask you, since you no longer have a public blog, what is your take on Nick Clegg?
Pagan: You are woefully wrong about the Russian Revolution.
A revolution is not terrorism. Terrorism is an individual act. Revolution involves the masses, leaving behind their ordinary life, and becoming political.
Revolution would have occured with or without Lenin. If Lenin wasn't there, more likely a Kerensky would have emerged.
The Bolshevik government was the most democratic in history. The first government in history to grant gay rights. All laws without victims were overturned.
You as many on the right, mistake the military part of a revolution, for the whole process. The actual revolution was not real violent.
Pagan,
Clegg is another success of media style but devoid of political substance; he has gotten away with a lot because his party is so relatively insignificant to the other two he and his party have not been put under such intense scrutiny.
For instance, on immigration during the so-called leader’s debate he decided to conceal his real policy of unlimited immigration into the UK and an ‘amnesty’ for the estimated 1 million illegal immigrants already here. Why? Because he knows that virtually no Britons want it as the last government poll showed 77% wanted immigration cut and another recent poll showed over 80% regard immigration to be the most important policy area in the forthcoming election, way above even the economy.
On crime too, he concealed his policy to end real punishment for many crimes with offenders such as burglars and muggers not being sent to prison but given instead ‘community rehabilitation’ – one of the idiotic polices that has already led to this crime explosion in the UK but on a much grander scale.
With the economy his only sound bite to speed up ‘debt’ repayment and fill the strangely arbitrary figure of £5bn deficit in public services was that he would close tax loopholes for the rich, and when questioned further for the first time what these loopholes were and how much it would recover he couldn’t answer.
(Personally I think a start toward helping our battered economy, lowering taxes and ending taking the tax payers for an expensive do-gooders ride would be to stop the £10bn the UK gives away annually on such things as gender equality in Uganda, providing 1m condoms to South Africans or registering voters in Nepal, let alone the £1bn we give to India, an economic power house and nuclear power with a space programme that we don’t have and cant afford; and we are even giving money to China too.)
In short Clegg’s appeal has ostensibly risen because some straw polls say that he ‘won’ the ‘leaders’ debate but the reality is that you couldn’t fit a cigarette paper between all three establishment parties and their core policies.
Not one of them is fit to lead.
Renegade Eye,
I think you were addressing that last comment to me. And we have been through this before, I believe.
“A revolution is not terrorism…Terrorism is an individual act.”
Really.
So anti-democratic violence and extra-judicial killings are not an act of terrorism?
And how do the various terror groups such as Al-Qaeda or the IRA fit into terrorism being “an individual” act?
“The actual revolution was not real violent.”
Well aside from Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their physician, and several servants who were taken into a basement and murdered under the direct orders of Lenin that just might contend that point, Richard Pipes, an expert in the area say in his work “A concise history of the Russian Revolution” that the Russian revolution continued from 1917-1922 and resulted in 9 million deaths in total.
We all know that the revolution certainly didn’t end after October 1917.
It was Lenin who created the first Soviet Secret police terror organisation, the Cheka and by 1921 just one branch of these organisation (Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic) numbered 200,000 - "These troops policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, liquidated political opponents (on both the right and the left), put down peasant rebellions, riots by workers, and mutinies in the Red Army, which was plagued by desertions"
All on Lenin's orders - the supposed liberator of the workers was in fact violently oppressing workers actions and murdering workers wholesale.
"At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, and executions of "enemies of the people". In this, the Cheka said that they targeted "class enemies" such as the bourgeoisie, and members of the clergy; the first organized mass repression began against the libertarian Socialists of Petrograd in April 1918…"
And we are talking about very significant amounts of people murdered, the vast majority were peasants and workers the estimates are at around 500,000 people murdered during this period.
"Lenin himself seemed unfazed by the killings. On 12 January 1920, while addressing trade union leaders, he said:
"We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka
And who was the second in command in the USSR when all this was going on? Trotsky.
Lenin used his terror apparatus to put down the very people he purported to champion - the workers - using his secret police and militia to ruthless suppress peasant rebellions and striking workers who had now become 'enemies of the state' for protesting.
It doesn't sound to me like a place I, or the majority of people, would want to live - its sounds like a tyrannical hell.
Add to that the fact the various other communist / socialist regimes (invariably born of similar terrorism) have murdered around 110,000,000 people so far, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987, it is not really surprising that most people focus on this aspect of the workers paradise.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM
Sentinel-
I read somewhere Clegg might become the next PM, even if his party stays the minority party. Is that really possible? I didn't think Britain voted for Prime Minister, I thought the party leader of the majority party got the post.
I think he's doing well just because people are disgusted with the Tories and Labour, especially Labour. But it could cause a split government, which of course would mean Labour and LibDems would probably form a pact to lead. I guess under that scenario Clegg could position himself as Prime Minister.
I feel sorry for your country, because if they fall for this, and it ends up being a Labour-LibDem coalition government, I think it's going to piss a lot of people off, especially when they see the results on down the line.
Pagan,
Clegg cannot be PM with such a result, but he may just get a cabinet post in the likely event of a hung parliament.
Yes, the people here are pissed off and completely disillusioned with this shower of LibLabCon who are really just three heads of the same body.
This election is probably the most unpredictable in the history of Britain, the disillusionment with the establishment parties is widespread, and not just because they are not really any different or because they have been caught out robbing us all blind in the expense scandal but because people are sick and tired of the way things are and are heading and they know that these shysters are serving up more of the same with bells on.
Personally, I think the hung parliament and coalition between these self-serving treasonous thieves is just what the country needs to wake it up in 5 years time.
Seeing as 85% of our laws are made abroad now anyway it makes little difference as to which lying thief parks his arse in number 10 in this era, but it just well might awaken people here enough to start another era, one that looks after them, their interests and the interests of their children.
One thing about Americans you have to marvel at is their naive, ingrained optimism, that after all the betrayals by every "party"; that THIS will be the one through which I can express my interests!
"Independent" is just another word for fickle or undecided. When the wallet is fat they support whoever, when the wallet thins out they want a change.They have no coherent, enduring political philosophy.Liberal, Conservative,Libertarian, all throw around big words like Liberty and Freedom but they all end up bowing and scraping to the twin Masters of Necessity and Desire.
Politics as such is a hollow facade.Locked and Loaded is the new "ask not what your country can do..."
Renegade Eye said...
'White Rabbit: They came to town hall meetings armed. With no real program, they'll probably split into factions'.
So that would be nuts.
Suspected as much...
Troutsky-
Contradict yourself very often. On the one hand you criticize Americans for their support of one party over another, and in the next breath you call independents fickle. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, the only winner is always going to be one of the two major parties. The only thing Americans can do is gauge between the two as to which one will at least make the attempt to represent their interests.
If I had my way about it, and if it were remotely possible, all political parties would be outlawed and association with any would be grounds for prosecution on grounds of sedition.
Unfortunately, there is that ideal world, and then there is the one we have.
Pagan: Terrorism has only one definition. It's not every violent event you disagree with.
Terrorism doesn't include violence by the state or groups that control territory.
Again you're mixing up the Russian Revolution, with the Civil War.
Are your rantings against liberals terrorism?
Your confusing the KGB of Stalin, with the Cheka of Lenin. Lenin dealt with a real civil war. Stalin dealt with conspiracies.
White Rabbit: The Tea party is hard to define, since its a mish mash. I'm watching to see how the Republican takes to the extremists in the rank and file.
Sentinel: Labour will win.
Troutsky: Independent and leans towards, means loyal voter. They are more loyal than those with party identification.
Renegade Eye,
I very much doubt that.
But then after over a decade of their destruction of education standards, incessant tax payer funded propaganda and smears and careful deliberate importation and cultivation of gerrymandering demographic changes designed to be reliant on them in addition to presiding over a bigger state employment then the USSR anything is possible.
War criminals, thieves, traitors and liars to the last man that they are, anything remotely to do with Labour they are not.
It is a merely a vehicle of the likes of the Mandelson’s, Brown’s, Harman’s, Milliband’s and Blair’s who have never done a days Labour in their lives.
Labour party? Dinner party more like.
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