Under the Tea Party Hood

An interesting look at the Tea Party and its demographic origins in the NY Times:

Crashing the Tea Party

First, the article looks at where the Tea Party stands now.  Turns out, more and more people are lining up against the Tea Party.

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent.

Of course, no real mention of where the remaining 40% stand.  I can't possibly believe those 40% fall into the "had not heard enough category" after all the press the Tea Party received during the debt ceiling debate.  It's also hard to believe they would still be in some kind of "indifferent" category.  Either way, seems like a bit of an omission.

What's striking, though, is just how much some people disapprove of the Tea Party.

Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

That's right... more than Muslims, or (shudder) Atheists.  Despite the fact that our country was founded by a number of non-believers, atheism might as well be a four letter word to most Americans (and it may literally be to other Americans given the sad state of our educational system), and yet the Tea Party ranks even lower.  I have to confess that when I read how the Christian Right also dwelled in the basement, I had to smile a bit.  Sometimes I feel like the Christian Right distorts their faith so much that it becomes a bit unrecognizable.

The NY Times article goes on to explain that the Tea Party and the Christian Right might have more in common than sharing the toilet of American approval ratings.

Professors David Campbell (Notre Dame) and Robert Putnam (Harvard), the authors of the article, interviewed three thousand people back in a 2006 study to explore national political attitudes.  Then they reinterviewed the same three thousand people again this summer.  They found a number of interesting things.

First, they discovered that many Americans were indeed swinging toward the more fiscally conservative side of the spectrum, something that ought to help Tea Party popularity, not hurt it.  They also found that despite many Tea Party claims, their origin story doesn't involve a mishmash of different political ideologies all uniting behind the idea of smaller government.

... The Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

So no shock there, but I guess it's nice to have some confirmation to what many of us already believed.  But the article goes on to uncover some more disturbing trends.

They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

And a little more for good measure.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

Now people like Michele Bachman and Gov. Perry start to make a little more sense.  Perry recently held a giant prayer meeting in Houston to ask God to help solve our country's problems.  Michele Bachmann has talked at length about her Godly submission to her husband, who told her to go be a tax attorney and run for office (and as Bill Maher pointed out, when most husbands get that level of submission from their wives, they ask for a three-way... Mr. Bachmann chose tax attorney).  She's talked at length about her love for gay people:

“If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.” — Senator (sic) Michele Bachmann, speaking at EdWatch National Education Conference, November 6, 2004.

Or another quote from that same banner day:

“Don’t misunderstand. I am not here bashing people who are homosexuals, who are lesbians, who are bisexual, who are transgender. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders.” — Senator (sic) Michele Bachmann, on homosexuality as a mental disorder, speaking at EdWatch National Education Conference, November 6, 2004.

It's not that she hates them, she just feels sorry for them and their dysfunctional, depressing, S&M-esque, sickness... which doesn't really make homosexuality out to be the choice that the current Defense of Marriage Act legislation sort of hinges on to keep it from being discriminatory, but that's neither here nor there.

In the end, the study found that most people strongly disapprove of bringing more religion into politics, and that is one of the biggest reasons for the drop in Tea Party popularity despite their having their fingers a bit on the pulse of the fiscal conservatism sweeping the country.

And yes, there are phallic shots of Michele Bachmann eating the same corn dogs as Rick Perry for those who want to find them.