There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.
No shit. That won’t stop our media from pretending this is some new and emergent force in politics. No one could have predicted a movement funded by the Koch brothers and initiated by Dick Armey was actually just another Republican effort.
Paul in KY
Why knock me over with a feather, Mavis!
Does the sun still rise in the East?
cleek
it might be more interesting to see where the teabaggers differ from Republicans who don’t consider themselves teabaggers.
Mudge
Don’t forget Fox News’ role.
Asshole
This is great news for McCain… oh, wait, no it isn’t, they’re primarying him. Shit. That joke doesn’t work here.
Bulworth
Except there’s that one dude over there in that other state who is registered Dem but hasn’t voted for a Dem candidate since voting for Henry “Scoop” Jackson because the Democrat Party left him, he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, and also, too, he’s a teabagger, so really the teaparty patriots are bipartisan.
Hal
I wonder, in the years to come, if their will be an expose on how the media fell for the Tea Party shtick as some new, never-before-seen political movement, which was in reality just Republicans pissed of at the new Black President? Sort of like follow up pieces to all of Judy Miller’s lies in the NYT’s.
Of course, that assumes the media actually believes it’s own lies about Tea Baggers and aren’t just attempting to create more news for our 24 hour news cycle.
Omnes Omnibus
So it’s kind of like those “Libertarians” and “Independents” who have voted straight ticket Republican for the past 25 years purely by coincidence?
strawmanmunny
Tea Party people are just Republicans that are too embarrassed after W to say they are Republicans.
El Cid
And here I was ready to launch my Georgia Tea Partiers for Soshullism group.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
“the Republican brand is in the trash can…if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”
Teabaggers are Republicans who voted for Bush and didn’t say one damn word as he drove the country into a ditch. They had to re-brand so they could pretend they were always deficit hawks and budget balancers.
geg6
As most things political these days, the suckitude of our media is undoubtedly one of the major causes. Can’t wait til these fuckers all die. And I really don’t give a damn if Jeffrey Goldberg is given the vapors by my comment. I mean it, with prejudice.
shortstop
Isn’t this the seventh or eighth poll to have such a finding? But remember, once a black guy came to a rally, and he used to be a Democrat, so the ‘bagger movement is diverse.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Omnes Omnibus:
Exactly. It’s all Glibberish.
some other guy
15% of self-identified Tea Party supporters approve of Barack Obama and plan on voting for a Democrat in the fall? WTF?
Zifnab
You can’t sell the Tea Party as nothing more than Republican Heavy. It’s much more than that. The Tea Party is an attempt to further purify the Republican representatives. That’s why you see all these primaries and such an uptick in rhetoric. Charlie Crist is no Marc Rubio. JD Hayworth is no John McCain. Rand Paul isn’t Mitch McConnell. These aren’t your grandpa’s Republicans. These are Jim DeMint’s grandpa’s Dixiecrats.
Zifnab
@some other guy: Even within the fringe contingent there is a fringe contingent.
some other guy
@Zifnab:
I wonder if 15% of the KKK actually really enjoys the company of blacks and Jews, but they just go along to get along, only revealing their secret to some random pollster who happens to call them.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wait, how do you know my older brother?
I have an “independent centrist” older brother who thinks Bill Clinton is a rapist, Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster, Al Gore is a con-artist trying to rip everyone off with the fraud of climate change, John Kerry was planning on running for President way back in the 60’s and that’s why he went to Vietnam and that Barack Obama is a $oci@l1st.
Never once has my “independent centrist” brother ever taken the opportunity to complain about Republicans. It’s probably just an anomaly.
GambitRF
@some other guy:
Proof that all the dumb and offensive stuff the tea party does is done by Democratic plants!!1!
El Cid
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I always interpreted Fourthbranch Cheney’s “deficits don’t matter” comment as meaning they don’t matter politically, and in particular not for Republicans.
I don’t think even that was universally true, because I think that part of Poppy Bush’s weakened ‘conservative’ (and Republican-voting ‘independents’) standing was due to Ross Perot’s obsessive campaign against deficits.
Staging a Comeback
This. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them anoint Lester Maddox or George Wallace as their patron saint pretty soon.
kay
You have to hand it to Armey and the Koch brothers, though.
This scam was clever, and media bought it hook, line and sinker.
They managed to rename the base of their Party, and sell it like it was new, not just to media and public, but to those disaffected base Republicans.
Democratic House members must have known that the screaming town hall attendees weren’t Democratic voters, and were never going to be Democratic voters, any more than liberal base-voter protesters at a Republican event were ever going to vote for a Republican, but the media juggernaut was so overwhelming it simply became true that those people were disaffected “independents” and politicians can’t dismiss any voter, or they risk being labeled unresponsive.
They must be thrilled at the success of this tactic.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Zifnab: Yes but the media keeps trying to pretend that they’re not Republicans at all. Is the point.
It’s the GOP base. An extreme version, pulled to the right, all the things you said, but they’re definitely Republicans.
Ash Can
I’d like to know who doesn’t believe the Tea Party is anything other than the Republican Sore Losers Club of America. I even call BS on the media; there’s no way they’re that dumb. I believe they’re just trying to stir up some shit to give themselves something to report on. It’s a make-work project for them.
jrg
Ahh, the media. Republicans aren’t actually Republicans, and torture isn’t actually torture. I miss it when words actually meant something.
Kryptik
@jrg:
But Democrats ARE necessarily Soshulists, and Communists are still evil, so they’re still consistent where it counts, right?!
Omnes Omnibus
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I know a lot of people.
Also, isn’t it said that, at universities, a libertarian is usually just a Republican guy who doesn’t want to wreck his chances of sleeping with a liberal girl?
kay
It would be interesting to see the media response to a loud bunch of liberal Democratic base voters showing up at GOP Town Halls, and essentially shutting them down, and calling themselves a new movement.
Would they ever be portrayed as “disaffected independents” or a new Party, “potential voters” the GOP House member had to persuade or court, to the extent of changing his or her vote on pending legislation? No matter how clever or deceptive the marketing?
I don’t think so. I think they would be summarily dismissed by media as liberal Democratic voters disrupting GOP Town Halls.
jrg
@kay: Code Pink says “hi”.
**Edit – by this I mean they were treated with profound disrespect and labeled as far left.
El Cid
@kay: As the United Fruit lawyer said as he was looking back on the company’s successful propaganda campaign to support the CIA’s overthrow of Guatemala’s elected reformist President Jacobo Arbenz, “It’s hard to make a case for the manipulation of the press when the victims prove so eager for the experience.”
Roger Moore
@kay:
No, the scam wasn’t particularly clever, but the media bought it hook, line, and sinker anyway. That should tell you everything you need to know about the intelligence and competence of the mainstream media today.
Howlin Wolfe
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Here, here, J.A.F.R.S. The incoherence of their ideology makes the media-driven inflation of their importance a sort of bubble, like the housing bubble. And it will burst some day because their force of its philosophical cohesion is too weak to remain stable.
Alex S.
@strawmanmunny:
Exactly! They know that Bush wasn’t exactly the best president. They also know that they are “supposed” to disown him, for the sake of the Republican Party. And yet, they are not supposed to change any of their beliefs, and this dissonance is driving them crazy.
Alex S.
@some other guy:
These people must be Massachusetts liberals who think that the Tea Party is exactly that.
kay
@jrg:
Right.
But had they been Tea Party members ( the conservative base), there would have been much media handwringing on whether Republican House members could risk voting ‘yes’ on war funding without alienating the “independent” members of Code Pink, correct?
Hah! Fact chance. If they got any press at all it would be “why are those far Left voters disrupting a Real America Town Hall? They don’t vote for Republicans anyway”
Sentient Puddle
@Hal:
From my vantage point, it’s easy to explain. The media still buys into the lazy notion of the independent voter. The teabaggers relabeled themselves as independents, and with the media assuming that independents are centrist, bingo! Groundswell uprising against Obama!
kay
@Roger Moore:
It took me forever, but I eventually “got it” from two things: the media coverage of the ‘death tax’ and bankruptcy ‘reform’.
How freaking long did it take for the facts to dribble regarding those two scamolas? Five years.
How hard is it to find out whether ‘family farmers” are losing the farm because of the estate tax? How hard is it to find out that many, many bankruptcies resulted from medical debt?
Five years hard, apparently. Ask a regular low-information voter about the “death tax”. Not only will they tell you it led to many, many people losing their family farm in Iowa, they will tell they have paid a federal estate tax.
jrg
Point taken. They were treated as a politically irrelevant sideshow. Even after being proven correct, they are treated like they were “correct, but in the wrong way”.
Teabaggers, OTOH, are treated like they have legitimate concerns… Even though their movement is clearly a leaderless goat rodeo consisting almost entirely of sore Republican losers.
This is by design, in my opinion… The teabag movement is the GOP ratfucking their own base to prevent them from forming a third party.
Comrade Dread
Sweet Buddha, why next you’ll be telling me that they’re lying about cutting spending, concern about the deficits, and shrinking government.
Is it 5 yet? This comrade could use a +1 right about now.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay #34:
Ha! I think “fact chance” may have been a typo, but in the context of the thread, it’s perfect!
handy
@Sentient Puddle:
OK I’m probably channeling my inner Broder boy saying this, but I think a lot of independents are “centrist” (or something neither left nor right, for lack of a better term), in that they accept some basic liberal premises–government doesn’t have to be a problem, taxes aren’t always evil, the Iraq war is basically a quagmire–but these are probably rather soft positions and rather malleable. Sometimes they poll well for wingnut positions but they’re not committed to the cause, so their votes change over time.
BobT
I never bought into the idea that the “Tea Party” was a distinct political entity from the Repubs. It is an astroturf organization conceived as a reaction by conservatives to distance themselves from the Bush-43 years, years that drove our country into the ground. Their jealousy of Obama’s popularity and promise of change only fueled further their lust to regain power by any sleazy means possible – all the while sweeping up ignorant (but well-meaning folks) as well as extremist right-wingers in the process.
Tea Partiers are nothing more than Bushies who refuse to admit they were wrong on just about everything, and try to deflect such criticism by creating false and deceptive conspiracies upon a democratically elected presidential successor.
Suck on it, Tea Baggers.
spudvol
RedNecks – PinkNecks = TeaParty
kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
It was a typo, but it is infuriating, isn’t it?
Out-of-district ‘Tea Party’ voters who went to Democratic House member’s Town Halls were treated as this serious electoral threat who must be pacified by the Democratic House member, or risk losing that seat.
Would that ever happen with out of district liberals screaming and raising hell in a GOP House member’s Town Hall?
Media would be sneering, if they bothered to note it at all.
Corner Stone
@Comrade Dread:
If age isn’t a factor when deciding to sail around the world, then I don’t see why what the clock says should be a factor for drinking.
Have I taught you nothing?
Comrade Dread
@Staging a Comeback:
Joe McCarthy.
There are many people who preach about a small Federal government who conversely seem to have a real hard on about using the power of the Federal government to conduct witch hunts and persecution on their enemies.
And if they retake one or two houses of Congress, you can bet the Tea Party base will be screeching, not to cut spending or shrink government, but to start issuing subpeonas on the liberal commies that threaten the real ‘Murika with their soshalist health care ideas.
Sentient Puddle
@handy:
And while seemingly a reasonable assumption, it’s still wrong. Here’s a good breakdown of the numbers. The vast majority of self-described independents are in fact strongly partisan (i.e., they’re independent because the Republican party is too liberal), and even those that aren’t strongly partisan are still very loyal to a party.
And really, this is something the media should know by now. This stuff was well-documented almost twenty years ago.
daryljfontaine
@Corner Stone: Besides, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
D
handy
@Sentient Puddle:
Not being a stathead, there are some parts of your first link where I’m not clear how they reach their conclusions based on the data they present, but I think we both agree that the media has been very dishonest and lazy about the whole concept of “partisan” and how it’s applied. And even more important, in today’s political climate, Democrats shouldn’t even both with “reaching across the aisle,” since that standard only gets applied in one direction.
El Cid
@handy: Most polls I’ve seen indicate that “independent” seems more of a reaction to party identifications while most “independents” actually vote strongly conservative Republican or strongly liberal Democrat. The number of truly ‘undecided’, more flexibly voting “independents” seems usually to be much smaller. Wish I could quickly dig up links.
liberal
@kay:
The media doesn’t report facts. It just does “he said/she said.”
Since right-wingers and Republicans are far, far more willing to lie and propagandize than Democrats, and since the right-wing (if not currently the Republican Party) has much deeper pockets, the media gives this stuff lots of airplay.
Corner Stone
@daryljfontaine: If I can have a conf call with a colleague in Hong Kong, or London, or Kuwait, at pretty much any time we need to then I don’t see why anyone would hold themselves to such an anachronistic restriction as “time zones”.
Jeffro
Why, next thing you know, someone in the media will notice that in every aspect except the most important one, Sharron Angle = Sarah Palin.
Nah, never happen…
Kevin
…wait…really? Is the media really just picking up on this now? I knew they were dense, but come on! This is utterly ridiculous.
scarshapedstar
fix’d
Continuum
How in any way, shape or form is this a revelation.
Only the villagers in the MSM pretended that the Madhatters of the Tea Party were truly independent voters.
The rest of us already knew that they were Republican rightwing shills, bought and paid for by their corporate masters.