Tea Party United by Politics, Demographically Diverse
According to two new surveys, the Tea Party movement is supported by 28% of Americans, half of its members are non-Republicans, and, aside from skewing slightly white and male, remarkably similar to the country as a whole demographically.
A poll of registered voters by the Winston Group, The Hill reports, finds that the “national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic” and that, compared to the population as a whole, “more likely to be male, slightly older and middle income. Almost half the members of the group reported getting their news about national issues from Fox News, 10 percent of respondents said that talk radio is one of their top two sources, which is seven-points higher than the average voter.” A Gallup survey of adults, Lydia Saad notes, finds the group to self-identify as 49% Republican, 43% Independent, and 8% Democrat.
Now, as Doug Mataconis notes, self-identification can be a dubious metric and it’s quite conceivable that plenty of those claiming to be Independent are reliable Republican voters. Indeed, according to both polls, roughly two-thirds of the Tea Partiers consider themselves “conservatives.”
Demographically, Partiers are much more like the country as a whole than many of us might have imagined.
They’re slightly skewed by gender, with a membership that’s 55% male and 45% female, versus 49% and 51% for the sample surveyed by Gallup. And 79% of them are non-Hispanic whites, versus 75% in the adult sample. But that’s not surprising, since conservatives tend to skew white and male generally.
In terms of age, education, employment status, and income, they’re virtually indistinguishable from their countrymen. Indeed, they’re ever-so-slightly more likely to have gone to college, to be employed, and to earn above $50,000 a year.
The divergence, naturally, comes on politics. Aside from being much more conservative generally than non-Tea Partiers, Winston found,
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.
It isn’t a “purely homogeneous” group, said Winston.
The group has a favorable view of Republicans generally but that drops from 71 to 57 percent if they’re asked about Congressional Republicans. Congressional Democrats are viewed very unfavorably by 75 percent of Tea Party members — a uniquely strong antipathy. An overwhelming 95 percent said “Democrats are taxing, spending, and borrowing too much.”
The group also vehemently dislikes President Barack Obama — even more so than those who called themselves Republicans in the survey. Over 80 percent of Tea Party members disapprove of the job he’s doing as president, whereas 77 percent of Republican respondents said they disapprove of Obama. The Tea Party members are also strongly opposed to the Democrats’ healthcare plan, with 82 percent saying they oppose it – only 48 percent of respondents overall were opposed.
Gallup didn’t ask (or at least, Saad doesn’t report) about Obama. But 97% thought the healthcare bill was a “Bad thing” and 65% are “Pro-life” compared to 50% and 46% of adults generally.
UPDATE: I’m not sure I’d go so far as Ed Morrissey in arguing that these results belie the description of Tea Party followers as “racist, reactionary, [or] Birthers.” There’s nothing in these surveys that directly addresses any of those charges. And, indeed, my strong guess is that Birthers, in particular, are disproportionately represented.
But, considering that 28% of Americans support the Tea Party movement and only 26% oppose it, it would seem to be pretty mainstream. Or, at least, something decidedly more than a fringe group.
Photo by Flickr user Fibonacci Blue under Creative Commons license. Tea Party rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, 13 March 2010.
James;
I find it interesting that the diversity in the Tea Party movement… both ethnically and politically… is one point that the major news media has not been covering. As a matter of fact, I keep hearing from people who have been attending tea parties that the news media when they show up seem to be going well out of their way to avoid taking pictures of any minorities who show up in support of the Tea Party. Ggee, I can’t imagine why that would be, can you?
That said, in your observations seem to me fairly well spot on ; The tea party looks like America.
You know, they told me if we elected Obama he would unite America. Looks like they were right. America is united against him.
Sounds like the onion. 24% of Americans are tea folk, doubt it.
I guess in your “America” (Kentucky maybe?), 80% of the people are non-Hispanic whites and 65% pro-life. The actual America is, however, much much different.
Saying that you support the Tea Party movement doesn’t mean that you’re part of the Tea Party movement. Different people may have different ideas of what the wording of the question went.
I “support” the Kansas Jayhawk basketball and football teams, but I would wager that the demographics of the people on the team and the demographics of the people who support the team are vastly different.
This survey would be much more intersting if it were a survey of people who had actually attended at least one Tea Party protest.
That was an interesting media connection. The Fox and radio data reinforce the idea that “proponent” sources are driving conflict.
This post is pure spin. The Tea Party movement is the American version of the Poujadists in France during the 50’s: rural or small town, modestly educated, overwhelmingly white, culturally right-wing, and violently opposed to social welfare measures unless they benefit personally. I can’t see that the poll contains any surprises.
I honestly don’t see how. It seems clear to me that the issue being addressed by the poll was whether not the tea party are as were outside of America’s mainstream. If the survey had been limited to people who had actually attended 80 party protest, the claim could still be made that they are outside of the American mainstream.
Clearly, they are not, but are squarely in that mainstream. And still, the denial goes on. The depiction of right wing hex from rural America persist in the mindless of the left. Bloody well amazing.
Contradiction alert, contradiction alert:
Then a few paragraphs down, we get this:
Which one is it?
Seems like they don’t know how to create jobs. Here is my take in what to do.
1. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.
http://growth.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/who_broke_america_s_jobs_machine_27941
2. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The saving to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.
3. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a world of globalization and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5656
4. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today, there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/222836/output/print
5. Consider an “American job elimination tax” on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.
6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts did not solve problems. Did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems and not “stay the course.”
7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business has left. That means you cannot have small business as people that worked in factories lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.
8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out of business. a person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.
Interesting ideas, Gerry, especially the “job elimination tax.” It’s a very aggressive anti-trade measure, and would be hard -if not impossible- to enforce, but I’m open to some kind of consequences for shipping jobs overseas. Not sure a job elimination tax would do it.
I think the Tea Partiers should all get together, with their newfound power, and launch a boycott on all companies that uses cheap overseas labor. Whatdya say, Florack? Think you should start the meet-up group now, or later?
PS, I like the stuff about investment, but so many people have weird ideas about “investing” that I think it best that it should be left to the professionals. I know people who were buying AIG and GM stock even as they were being bailed out. They were making small change in the daily fluctuations and were hoping for a big pay day when they cashed in their chips. My protest of “But you’re buying crap companies” was met with howls. Sure, you can make a few nickels by playing it like a game, but investment requires more than that. Good on you for acknowledging that.
ALEX:
An interesting distinction. But most surveys of, say, Democrats and Republicans are of supporters rather than, say, convention goers. Activists are naturally going to be different from supporters.
HERB:
I don’t see any contraction here. They’re very slightly whiter, very slightly older, and very slightly higher income. But the Gallup numbers, especially, are remarkably similar across the board.
Stan:
Uh, it’s a reporting of the numbers from two reputable surveys as juxtaposed against your unsupported assertions.
Nah, this just proves that racists prone to violence are united by politics and demographically diverse.
I think you are confusing your demographics James. Whites as a whole are close to 80% of the population, but Non-Hispanic whites, which are indicated in the survey, are around 65% of the population as of 2008. There is nothing slighty about a 15% difference between the Tea Partiers and the population.
NHW were 79% of the Tea Party sample and 75% of the whole sample in the Gallup survey. That 4% is statistically significant but hardly whopping.
What percentage are for
government-supported health careMedicare? (I ‘d bet 100% of those guys represented by the “World War II Combat Infantrymen No Socialized Medicine” sign — minus the ones on the VA.)Charles, is that the violence exemplified by the throwing of eggs at buses in Nevada? How about the the assault on an African American male by members of the SEIU? How about the violence in the acts of William Ayers? Oh! I am sorry Charles. All of those incidents seem to be from the left. Notice a trend? I would like for you to quote some major, or minor violence by Tea Party attendees. Certainly nothing happened when a group of anti American Democrats went out of their way to walk through a Tea Party group outside the Capital. I do not think the cries of racism is going to work this time. Just wait until November. I think you will be suprised by the gratitude of the African American community for all the benefits they have reaped at the hands of Barack Hussein Obama.
I don’t, as a liberal democrat, give a darn about race, racism, racists, and so on at the moment. Talk about red herrings! Let’s focus on the important thing about the Tea Party movement – they’re morons with nothing whatsoever resembling a clue how to fix their country.
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.
Listen to this!!! If their brains were sandwiches, you can see the layer of Fox News peanut butter lying on top of what we might call “common sense”. The result is complete incoherency.
“Cutting spending is the key to job creation”??? Has this ever happened in world history? Spending is cut, GDP is reduced and job creation suddenly exposed? Conservative economists don’t buy this. Congressional Republicans aren’t even stupid enough to buy this. It’s pure wish fulfillment.
And then, in the next question, they think that infrastructure spending creates jobs! And so does cutting spending! And tax cuts! Of course, the stimulus bill was full of… infrastructure spending and tax cuts!
Meanwhile, every state newspaper in the country is full of massive state government budget cuts for practically every position not bailed out by the stimulus plan. Spending being cut all over the place! And look at the resulting job crea… oh, wait. I’m sorry. I mean, massive job loss!
You complete idiots, we’re in the middle of the biggest private and non-federal public spending cuts since the GOSHDARN HOOVER ADMINISTRATION!!!
LOOK AT THE EFFECT ON JOBS!
I just can’t take the stupidity, and the sheer malice of the hacks and entertainers filling the heads of the gullible with this sort of thinking over at Murdoch Headquarters. I just don’t get it. Isn’t Rupert a businessman? hasn’t this recession been bad for him? Why doesn’t he smack his talking meat puppets around until they stop telling the public at large that they should agitate for more recessions, as fast and hard as possible?
PS: TAX CUTS CREATE BUDGET DEFICITS, PEOPLE! YOU’RE RALLYING IN THE STREETS TO DEMAND MORE OF WHAT YOU’RE RALLYING IN THE STREETS TO PROTEST AGAINST!!! We are living the Mike Judge movie. Living it. Every day.
Better to compare protesters to protesters, than protesters to apparatchiks.
Perhaps the analogue is people sympathetic to anti-war protesters, and some of the crazier signage at war protests.
FWIW, I started out sympathetic to the Tea Partiers, while always feeling a bit superior (no surprise, so I might was well cop to it). Their platform has always been too many wanna’s and wishes and too little pragmatic realism.
Add to that the racist episodes and the “don’t let the government take away my Medicare signs” and it all reinforced.
I suppose I should try to wean myself of the racism linkage but the rest might be harder.
So if liberal protest groups make up doesn’t break down like what the make up of Americans is or if they don’t have ideology diversity then they are not diverse?
Nah. I’d rather see them launch a boycott on unions. After all, it’s the unions and their excessive demands that cause companies to look for cheaper solutions elsewhere.
Glasnost, spending more than you have creates deficits. Nothing more, nothing less. The fact that tax revenues continue to rise each year even while deficits rise faster would be a hint to all but the most clueless partisan hacks that the deficit problem has more to do with a lack of discipline in spending than insufficient levels of taxation.
Gee, I can’t take the stupidity and the sheer malice of the hacks and entertainers filling the heads of the gullible with this sort of thinking over at ABC / CBS / NBC / MSNBC / PBS / NPR / NY Times / LA Times / Time / Newsweek / TNR / HBO / SEIU / DNC Headquarters. Imagine that.
ZRIII – Sorry, didn’t realize the /sarcasm html tag was necessary.
There are a lot of things I wouldn’t have the government do. I’m actually pretty hard core. I’d defund the Smithsonian and sell off the National Galleries.
Even so, I don’t think it’s a rational position to say “I’ll just sit here until they cut spending.” Worse yet to expand funding, as GWB did, while cutting taxes. That makes tax level a problem, yes.
The most preposterous idea was that we could run two wars on credit, while cutting taxes. Some people look at that accounting and say that GWB did not spend one dime of your tax money on the wars. He didn’t have your tax money. He was already in deficit. So he borrowed it all.
That was a colossal instance of fiscal irresponsibility … but people accepted it. Why? Because Cheney’s “deficits don’t matter” was accepted by the now-teapartiers?
Ah well, they can just blame Obama.
Yes, it’s all the unions that have caused the rapidly diminishing middle class and stagnant wages for 30 years with all of the gains going to those lazy poor people.
Except of course that they all went to upper management who soaked up all of the savings on labor thus the massive rise in inequality we see now.
The average CEO 40 years ago made about 30-40 times a front line worker, that ratio is now 400:1. Damn those unions and their demands.
Here’s another take on the poll numbers:
http://tinyurl.com/yegtg38
And I echo what Schooner said. We’re in a class war, and Joyner’s side is winning.
Glasnost, spending more than you have creates deficits. Nothing more, nothing less.
That’s nice. It also doesn’t contradict anything I said.
The fact that tax revenues continue to rise each year even while deficits rise faster
Ahem:
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/
Total US Federal Revenue in $bl:
2007: $2568 bn
2008: $2524 bn
2009: $2105 bn
2010: $2165 bn (est).
would be a hint to all but the most clueless partisan hacks that the deficit problem has more to do with a lack of discipline in spending than insufficient levels of taxation.
You’re opining on a question of opinion, value judgement, and personal preference. The correlation of Cutting spending to job losses is (at some non-marginal, deficit-solving level), in contrast, an empirical fact, and a bloody obvious one at that, not really disputed by educated person of any political philosophy, and one that the Tea Party simultaneously understands in some survey questions and categorically rejects in others, which is a neat trick only performable by morons.
I don’t care what your preffered policies are if you can avoid deluded thinking about their consequences. The TP momvement is founded on the same level of realism as Lyndon LaRouche.
I fail to see what’s new here: Stromberg doesn’t refute anything in my post. Indeed, he amplifies my headline: The thing that unites the Tea Partiers is their ideology.
Except they don’t really have any coherent ideology.They call for tax cuts while decrying the deficit. They ask for spending cuts but don’t want Medicare or the military budgets touched.
And they are incredibly uninformed.One of Obama’s main campaign promises was health care reform. He is duly elected and there are bills and debates for over a year and the bills are passed in line with all Congressional rules but he is a fascist for cramming reform down the throats of people.
These are the same people who support Sarah and the Death Panels.
Here’s a link that doesn’t engage in quite so much cherrypicking when it comes to federal revenue and expenditures and provides a context for federal revenue and spending back to 1962.
Revenue did fall in 2001, 2002, and 2003, primarily due to the bursting of the .com bubble and the effects of 9/11. Then revenue starting climbing again so that in 2007 it surpassed where it was in the glory days of 2000. Then the housing bubble burst and revenue started to decline again. So I was careless and wrong to say that revenue increases every year, but taken over the long term revenue does continue to increase over time. With the recent declines in revenue, 2009 will be close to 1999 in total revenue.
But look at the spending line. It just keeps going and going and going, rising when there is more revenue and rising when there is less revenue and then suddenly exploding in 2009, when spending will be about 75% higher than in 1999.
I blame Obama and Bush and Congress, and the media for not informing the public, and the public for not demanding more fiscal reponsibility from its elected representatives. But hey, we’re all Keynesian’s now.
To wit, you, Charles Austin, should feel free to agitate for large cuts in US federal spending, if you are willing to admit to general indifference as to the massive new spike in unemployment that will directly result from your preferences. But the TP folks are out there demanding federal spending cuts while telling surveyors that reducing unemployment is more important than the deficit. That’s some serious self-destructive idiocy.
Countries that actually live through massive, IMF-imposed cuts on federal spending aren’t quite so ignorant.
Charles, I look at your chart and see two bad turns in 2007. Spending turned sharply up, revenues turns sharply down.
Why do you pretend not to notice until 2009? That is just a continuation of the unfortunate 2007 reversal.
Actually the unions and the tax structure impose by the leftists the unions almost invariably support. THe reason wages are stagnant is taxes on business have been skyrocketing. WHat you’re complaining about is the results of socking the tax rates to the businesses.
First of all, I don’t accept your numbers.
But of greater concern is your misunderstanding of basic concepts. I’ve address this issue several times over the years, essentially this way:
OK, leave at the side of the road the arguments about since when is it government’s job to determine who has how much money… leave aside the issue of personal property, , all of that. Even assuming we were able to take the whole of the money the top 5% in this country has… all of it…. No percentage. no cut. Every last penny they have goes into pay for middle pass workers. THe bottom line for said middle class won’t be substantially improved one iota. The worker’s utopia doesn’t exist and I don’t care what kind of numbers you attach to your arguments trying to make the concept valid. It doesn’t work.
If we take that money and again, forgotten the issues I mention, drive all that cash into the government treasury, it still will not put even a small dent in the debt incurred by cradle-to-grave government. So tha doesn’t work either. ANd of course any combo of the two as the left seems bent on shoving down or throats just now, most certainly won’t work to anyone’s benefit except the leftist pols.
You seem under the rather common misconception (among liberals ) that finances are a zero sum game. They are not. That you can make the weak strong by making the strong weak. As Lincoln himself pointed out, that’s not true, either.
But, please, don’t let mere facts dissuade you from your mantra.
You can bet your bottom dollar most of these people are extremist ( KKK, skinheads)
Business tax rates are lower now than they were 30 years ago. That would seem to undercut your thesis.
Lincoln was pro-labor union, pro-strikes, and disdained corporations and banks, actually. He created the first income tax the United States ever saw and signed the Homestead Act — practically a socialist giveaway. Additionally, Karl Marx endorsed Lincoln’s presidency and thought highly of him.
It really irks me when people put their own political ideals in the mouths of historical figures who held no such beliefs.
Well, here’s a fact for you, Eric. Since the election of Ronald Reagan, conservatism, as James attested, has been the dominant political philosophy in this country. And in all that time, the welfare state has not been curtailed, in any meaningful way, one iota. In fact, with the drug benefit for seniors, on the watch of a conservative president and congress, the welfare state has advanced. What does that tell you about the strength of conservative ideas? It tells me that, among the electorate, those ideas have zero strength when it comes to actually, you know, doing something — else why, during all these years of conservative hegemony, have you boys done jack shit in implementing your vision of the new Jerusalem? How you gonna blame “leftists” for the manifest impuissance of conservative ideas?
The reason wages have been stagnate is that the trickle down theory did not work. The tax cuts went to the rich, our jobs went overseas, our money went to Iraq, and we had a nation in neglect. There are some 2 billion cheap laborers that says our wages will stagnate. On top of that the lax in anti-trust laws by Reagan on monopolies and consolidation has had an effect on the middle class with loss of jobs. And on top of all this, we have not invested in our country, in our people, nor in our country. There is no upward mobility as there are no “new” jobs to go to. This country is run on ideology and not practicality.
http://growth.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/who_broke_america_s_jobs_machine_27941
http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5656
http://www.newsweek.com/id/222836/output/print
The numbers are available here
http://www.faireconomy.org/news/ceo_pay_charts
Sources are:
Total executive compensation: 2005 data based on Wall Street Journal survey, April 10, 2006 and Business Week annual compensation surveys:Average worker pay is based on U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Alex Knapp demolishes your tax thesis.
The rest of your post is right wing talking points but I’ll address them as I can.
I never said CEO had to be regulated, (although making it go to a shareholder vote would help). I merely pointed out that compensation from US corporations now goes disproportionately to those at the top, you know like the guys on Wall St. that helped blow up the economy but still have their jobs and high pay.
The whole idea of trickle down is a sham and Bush I had it right when he called it Voo Doo economics.The last decade was the worst for jobs since the depression and GDP growth rate pales in comparison to that of the 50’s and 60’s when taxes were much higher as was unionization rates.
The first chart shows growth of about 14% from 1950-1979. The second chart shows growth of about 9% from 1980-2009.
http://www.measuringworth.com/images/headpx.jpg
http://www.measuringworth.com/images/headpx.jpg
There is simply no proof that the free lunch policies of the last thirty years have worked for anyone but the top 5%.
A silly, laughable assertion…but, that is to be expected of you…
Oh my, sounds like some kind of evil liberal conspiracy…
The picture that accompanies this post is very telling…a WWII veteran, who, one assumes is on Medicare, is against “socialized medicine”? Some nice cognitive dissonance going on there…who’s to say whether or not that represents the Tea Party Movement as a whole…
No doubt. But it’s also the unions (and those pesky minimum wage laws) that keep these companies from putting their (American) workers in sweat shops and paying them a dollar an hour.
Awfully convenient for these companies that Asia exists. (Of course, Hecho En Mexico is getting more common too.)
Of course, put me down saying that it’s cost-cutting and the profit motive that lures these companies into using off-shore labor, rather than the unions and their excessive demands. The unions may make the decision easier…but Nike didn’t decide to off-shore because of unions.
I support the Tea Party movement as our best chance to stand up to Obama and reveal his Kenyan, communist roots. If he had a birth certificate, he would show it, wouldn’t he? At least the Tea Partiers realize this is a REPUBLIC of LAWS and not his plaything. If we can’t get the imposter impeached now, we’ll vote in a new congress and then do it.
So, um, views like diamondback4u’s “would seem to be pretty mainstream? Or, at least, something decidedly more than a fringe group?”
That strikes me as more than a little, well, absurd.
It would, were it actually true once you cut away all the layers of crap designed to hide real accounting… including unfunded mandates on businesses. (For example Obamacare, which has AT&T taking a 1 Billion dollar write-off)
It’s true that the federal tax rates have held at around 40% since Reagan dropped them there in 86… it’s still a stupidly high figure. It gets worse when considering state and local governments., who also feel the need to tax the living crap out of any for profit company. The coal mine canary for the effects of leftist wet dreams on real people and their jobs, are places like New York California and Michigan. Ask the businesses leaving those states why they’re leaving… they’ll tell you operating costs… meaning, taxes, unions, and unfunded mandates.
So, government has no say in the matter? When the unions came on the scene there was no real collection of labor law that would address those issues. Thereby, back in those days, unions were useful . However, as with everything else, government has taken over that role, which in turn explains why union membership, (outside the realm of government workers) is that all time low.
It interests me that so many union members, leftists, the majority of them, are willing to place so much in the hands of government, and yet are not willing to identify unions as being superfluous.
or perhaps, if they see unions as another political arm of the socialist movement. Such as the SEUI… whose Andy Stern has everything but his own White House office.
either way, your comments don’t add up.
Or perhaps, you are simply babbling with near incoherence about socialists and leftists in the absence of any actual ideas…
Really? Explain Bill Clinton, GWB and Obama… Left, Center (at best),and left, Slaney overwhelming Liberal dominance in both houses of Congress over those twenty years. Your argument does seem to lack a little something.
You see, there’s your issue. You’re still under the illusion of Bush.. or the Congresses under him… were conservative. They were not.
Sorry, wrong answer.
Tea Party 48, Obama 44.
The trends are even more decisive… with Obama continues to plummet and the Tea Party continues to rise. Any questions?
Funny thing; you’ve done nothing in the way of offering proof of my being incorrect about that. THere’s a reason for that, and I suspect even you know what it is.
There are a lot of people on the right who would like more religion in government. Why not turn this place in like a Saudi Arabia? These problems and other problems are in both parties.
The fact remains is that we have globalization and our country refuses to recognize it. There are some 2 billion cheap laborers who want our jobs. Even in China, some jobs were outsourced to even lower paying countries. Unions may be one part of the puzzle, but they are not the only piece. Our government has to move forward to create “new” jobs to meet the demands of labor, preserve the middle class, and pay in taxes to support our government.
Another point on the Reagan tax cuts, while needed, many programs were left to the states to take care of and the states raised taxes and fees to cover what the federal government took care of before. Now our federal government can create wars as a convenience and use our money and we have no say. In short, our country is neglected because of ideologies and spending on wars.
Bush was and is a social conservative. Fiscal policy was not his forte. What we saw was the advancement of social conservative principles. It was an ideology of the “trickle down” theory and “stay the course.” It was the trashing of science. If and when he got into trouble or if he wanted to “fix” something, money was no object. Hence, Medicare part D and the war in Iraq. Hence, the deficits and debt, and Cheney saying “deficit’s don’t matter. Their ideology and principles come first and at any cost to our country and its citizens.
Well, you continue to cite Rusmussen as if it were something handed down from a burning bush, when everyone knows that they are simply in the business of telling Republicans what they wish to hear.
Why would anyone want to attempt to actually have a dialog with you? About as rewarding as attempting debate with the guy who stands at the street corner screaming at people while I am driving to work.
Umm, not really…even if we are going by the information you want to use, that hardly proves that “America is united against him”…
So what if the Tea Party is mostly White? The Democratic party openly appeals to the racial interests of blacks,asians and hispanics. White Americans need political repesentation also. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are competely hostile to White Americans.
Awwww…maybe you could start the Beige Caucus to see to the needs of the poor, oppressed light-skinned people…
8 years of a centrist Democrat that followed 12 years of Republican control (4 by a centrist Republican). GWB was a Republican and conservative by most people’s political yardstick. Obama was elected at least partially as a reaction to years of unpopular Republican control. That gives us 20 years of Republican control vs 9 years of Democratic control.
Of course only Reagan was a real conservative, right? That, of course, relies on a memory of Reagan decidedly different than the actual president.
Really? Control of the Senate has been evenly split over the past 20 years (5 R controlled, 5 D controlled, and 1 even split). Republicans controlled 6 of the past 10 Congresses (starting w/ the 101st in 1989).
I suppose you will sputter about how the Republicans controlling congress were actually liberal like McCain. If that is so shouldn’t that indicate to you that what you consider real conservatism has a vanishingly small constituency?
Help us out. Who do you consider a real conservative?
Setting for the moment the questionable provenance of your numbers, since when does a 48 v 44 split indicate a country unified in support of anything?
As opposed to what you have done?
Oh, I think I could safely include Fred Thompson. That’s not to say I agree with him about everything, but as I suggested before this is a sliding scale thing.
No, just a vanishingly small representation. Hence, the TEa Party, BTW.
if you want a question the source provided, there’s not much I can do to help ear decision-making process, since authority been done.
Again I suggest you look at the trends involved. They suggest an even stronger disapproval of the left amongst the electorate than the poll numbers are even showing.
Matter of fact, yes. Any other questions?
1) So no official elected to national office is a real conservative?
2) Given his anemic support in the primaries I would have to conclude that ‘real’ conservatives have very little support.
I guess that means that ‘real’ conservatives don’t vote in the primaries or general elections.
You do realize that there are other polls and you just happened to pick the outlier, convenient that.
I would suggest that you look back over the trends that you have claimed to see over the past couple of years and consider your own track record on that front. From what I have seen of your predictions thus far, I would bet against.
What say we make a bet. I will bet you that support for Obama does not drop below 40% this year (RCP avg) and the support for the tea party does not beat 60% this year. The loser must admit that he is an idiot and that his predictions are almost uniformly wrong at three times and places* of the winner’s choice. What do you say Bit?
* limited to the web or to OTB threads, your choice
Liberals
lol.Hmmm. Rich white guy with a trophy wife. Too lazy to run for President with any gusto. Sounds about right.
Good point. Bitsy is sort of the bizarro Nostradamus…
Personally, I would like Donald Trump or Alan Mulally as president for two years and without congress. Washington is dysfunctional and I see no other way of fixing our problems.
Really, no answer short of tyranny?
Bit,
I’ll give you 3 to 1 odds on the above wager.
I’ll even give you 55-60% on the Tea Party popularity as a no pay out if you think you need it.
Do you really believe in that trend or not?
LOL. Is this the same Rasmussen whose polling predicted Obama winning? Try again, your spinner ain’t workin’
Well, let’s see. Let’s try this one for starters…Who among the Republicans voted against the bailout?
No. What it means is, as I’ve been saying for years… the Republicans don’t offer real conservatives for the voters. I”ve said for years that the way to Republican victory is offering the voter real conservatives. THey’re out of power now precisely because they have refused to do that.
The left, particularly Obamites, do.
Everybody on the planet predicted Obama winning. That was not exactly a tough call. Oh wait, it was everybody but you 🙂
When everyone else had figured it out, you were regurgitating the crap that the McCain camp was spoon-feeding to the useful idiots, all the while patting yourself on the back for having “inside access” to polling data that was not available to the general public.
Considering how much contempt you now claim to have for the McCain folks, it is instructive how easily and completely they played you.
BS. Are you really trying to say that ‘real’ conservatives have been frozen out of the primaries for decades? Do you really believe that the GOP has refused to let any ‘real’ conservatives run in the primaries for decades? I’ll bet that you can’t show any evidence of this grand conspiracy in the GOP. We all know what comes next.
You claimed that you believed it. I see that you are not particularly confident in your prediction though. Come on Bit, if you really believed in the trend you would take the bet. Obviously you are just blowing smoke and don’t have any confidence in what you write.