The Winston Group, whose founder, David Winston, is a former fellow of the Heritage Foundation and who also worked for Newt Gingrich, has released a 
“new report” that purports to examine the composition and motivation of the Tea Party movement.
Using three national surveys of 1000 registered voters (over three months), the Winston Group “captured a subgroup of respondents identifying themselves as part of the ‘Tea Party’ movement.”
It turns out that the “subgroup” of people who self-identified as Teapartiers amounted to 511 folks, a mere 17% of the total.
As for the findings: Surprise! Teapartiers tend to be older, conservative, and Republican. Wow! I couldn’t have guessed that.
Oh, by the way, the study also found,
…almost three out of four Tea Party members anticipate that they will vote for a Republican candidate for Congress.
I’m shocked! 75% will vote for a Republican? What a stunning finding! Next we will find out that Teapartiers are mostly white!
The most telling question asked in the survey was what Teapartiers think of Barack Obama. The results will probably shock you, but, guess what? Teabaggers don’t like him:
| Obama Job Approval Tea Party (Feb 2010) Overall (Feb 2010)Approve 17 49
Disapprove 81 44 |
So, what we have in the Tea Party movement, to no one’s real surprise, is essentially a “We Hate Obama” movement.
Sure, the study makes a valiant effort to demonstrate that the movement is all about the “economy and jobs” and the “national deficit and spending,” and, no doubt, there are honest Teapartiers who have a genuine concern over our economic future.
But the truth is that at the core of the Tea Party movement is a group of older, white, conservative Republicans who feel culturally threatened by our pigmented president.
How else do you explain the public displays of handwringing and fretting over fiscal issues and the simultaneous admission that in the upcoming election Teapartiers are going to vote for Republicans?
Republicans!—the same party that has brought us to our fiscal knees in terms of the national debt and nearly wrecked the entire economy when they were last in power.
Look. Suppose you asked me what my biggest fear was, and I answered: “I am afraid my son will get involved in drugs.” Fine, you say. That is a legitimate concern these days.
But then you ask me what I’m going to do to help ensure he won’t get involved in drugs in the future, and I say: “I’m going to encourage him to befriend the neighborhood drug dealer.” You then have a legitimate right to question whether my concerns about his involvement in drugs is legitimate.
Such is the state of the Tea Party movement in these challenging times. The nasty placards, the spitting, the hurling of epithets—regular components of Tea Party gatherings—may actually say more about the movement than the Winston Group’s survey could ever say.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Juan Don
/ April 2, 2010Duane,
I stopped referring to movement conservatives — those who courageously escaped from their recliners to thwart the president’s “Marxist agenda” — as Tea ‘Partiers’ or Tea ‘Baggers’ a while back. I’ll let media professionals pretend the right-wing vacuum represent an independent, populist voice; describing the bigoted, mean rabble as John Birch Society Yahoos 2.0 is closer to the mark. Like some local political ‘opiners‘, the grammatically-challenged leftovers from Reagan’s Revolution have conveniently dropped their Republican Party affiliation — until they enter the voting booth. I can’t blame them. Squawking about President Obama’s reckless spending is much more fun when you’re not attached to the previous administration’s strange homage to “fiscal conservatism”. Of course, it’s purely coincidental that deficit hawks flex their feathery outrage only after their party is out of power.
And so it goes.
Keep up the good work.
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Captain Obvious
/ April 2, 2010I have never seen such a worthless string of simplistic speculation and voluminous bloviation based upon nothing more than a personal assumption of mala-fides.
“How else do you explain the public displays of handwringing and fretting over fiscal issues and the simultaneous admission that in the upcoming election Teapartiers are going to vote for Republicans?”
Because Republicans, accurately or not, campaign on fiscal conservatism. Obviously. I would even add “DUH”.
Perhaps, unlike you, they’ve read a book on basic economics and understand the confluences of federal reserve policy and entitlement politics of the Democrats that ACTUALLY led to the economic issues instead of reflexively making accusations grounded in personal political animous rather than reality.
“It’s Republicans’ fault because I don’t like them!” Very mature and sensible argument. Goes well with “I don’t like Republicans because everything’s their fault!” to complete your circle. Add “Everyone I hate is a stupid racist,” and you could have finished the entry in three sentences and taken the afternoon off. And you really should take a LOT more time off and do some hard research, like looking up “substantive” in the dictionary. I know that much is difficult for you, but it’s on the same page as “substantiated,” so give that one a try if you have any energy left.
Even if in bizarro world Democrats were noble saviours out to repel the Republican scourge, it isn’t sufficient for you that tea partiers could just be “wrong.” No, using your psychic “intention detector” you KNOW it’s all racism.
But considering what minimum portion of that 75% mathematically MUST be coming from the 4/10 of the Tea Party which are Democrats and Independents, your breathless indignation is laughably outre.
Nice “teabaggers” reference. You do that to your mother? The nasty wild accusations, the spitting, the hurling of epithets—regular components of this blog—may actually say more about the writer than the Winston Group’s survey could ever say about the Tea Party.
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Juan Don
/ April 2, 2010Are you the same Captain Obvious that currently holds the Guinness World Record for drinking six pots of coffee in five minutes and fourteen seconds? If so, my sincere congratulations. The best I can do is two pots in twenty five minutes. And even then I get all jittery, with audio/visual hallucinations that last well into “The O’Reilly Factor”.
I’ll bet you’ve freaked out more than one Waffle House waitress.
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Duane Graham
/ April 3, 2010Captain,
I’m hereby busting you to Lieutenant, for your failure to grasp a simple (obvious) point.
If you think Teapartiers (the subject of the post) “understand the confluences of federal reserve policy and entitlement politics of the Democrats,” you haven’t been paying attention to the obvious, Captain—uh, Lieutenant.
The Winston Group study itself found a contradiction in the supposed fiscal concerns of the teabaggers (if you were really Captain Obvious you would know my mother is long dead), which I will let you, in your obvious superiority, find for yourself. Hint: the Group tried to gloss over the anomaly.
As I said, there are people in the “movement” who are genuinely concerned about the state of our fiscal health (I even know some of them), but that is not the “core” reason many of these folks get together and vent their frustrations. If it were, they would have began this shit a long time ago, like when Bush set us on this trajectory with his massive tax cuts and spending spree. And they certainly would not again trust the Republicans with our fiscal wellbeing, given their track record, all the way back to Ronald Reagan.
Just to help you with a visual aid (i.e., just to make it obvious), here is a picture of a teabagger that I am fairly confident does not “understand the confluences of federal reserve policy and entitlement politics of the Democrats“:
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Jane Reaction
/ April 6, 2010Well, Duane, I think Jane is going to promote the man. To General Obvious Lee Little-Slow, from the Dumas tribe.
I guess Little-Slow missed the big chart showing precisely that only Bill Clinton has reduced the deficit at all since Raygun.
As fellow commentator Anson B. clarified-“considering their expressed outrage, I am surprised that only 75% of Tea Party adherents will vote Republican.” Me too Big-A since they obviously don’t know who their real enemies are.
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Jim
/ April 3, 2010“Perhaps, unlike you, they’ve read a book on basic economics and understand the confluences of federal reserve policy and entitlement politics of the Democrats that ACTUALLY led to the economic issues …”
The outstanding economic issue, as expressed by Teapartiers, is the debt created by the policies which they oppose (another, but not specifically economic, issue). And how have we been led to these issues? Look at:
[http://uspolitics.about.com/od/thefederalbudget/ig/Political-Economic-Measures/Debt-GDP-by-President.htm].
Leading up to the present, Democrats (every President) have IMPROVED our situation regarding this issue. Eisenhower’s administration is the ONLY Republican administration which reduced the debt. Basic economics is not too basic to include facts. Both your understanding and your emotional acceptance of the facts are needed.
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ansonburlingame
/ April 3, 2010OMG again,
90% of blacks vote Democrat. I wonder what percentage of Acorn supporters vote that way as well.
Frankly, considering their expressed outrage, I am surprised that only 75% of Tea Party adherents will vote Republican.
And then of course we can all waste our time digging around the black militant or white militant groups to see who is going to vote for who or what.
And of course we can go overseas and find Al Qaida wanting to simply blow everyone up and saying exactly that.
I suppose your point is that Tea Party folks have a lock on outrageous rhetoric or vitrolic words.
As for Reverend Wright or even some political left wing hacks appointed (or at least nominated) to the Obama administration, they don’t count, right??? Just like neo-cons, the really militant ones shouldn’t count in the Bush Administration. Hmmm?
Anson
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