Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

You cannot shame the shameless.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

This blog will pay for itself.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

T R E 4 5 O N

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

This fight is for everything.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Breaking News

Breaking News

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Here’s a shocker:

A new poll shows that half of those who consider themselves part of the tea party movement also identify as part of the religious right, reflecting the complex – and sometimes contradictory – blend of bedfellows in the American conservative movement.

Hmmm. That particular blend of bedfellows looks just like the traditional Republican base, to me. How are they new and different, again?

The poll released Tuesday, by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, comes as the tea party’s composition and potential impact is still under hot debate.

Only among those who have some interest in continuing to pretend the Tea Party is different than the Republican base, but maybe we need still more polling. These polls keep coming back “Republican”.

Institute chief executive Robert Jones said the poll, which was funded by the Ford Foundation, aimed to clarify the relationship between the two groups.

“The way the data looks, if this is a marriage of convenience, it’s one that would be against the law. The relatives are too close,” said Jones, a self-described progressive.

Pretty much.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  3. 3.

    Mike in NC

    Only among those who have some interest in continuing to pretend the Tea Party is different than the Republican base, but maybe we need still more polling.

    What else to expect from the Washington Post?

  4. 4.

    El Cid

    Re:

    How are they new and different, again?

    They’ve replaced public invocations of Old Testament vengeance with a Founding Father Fundamentalism which relies upon seeing the Constitution as an instrument directly inspired by God and put in place by Founding Fathers who were all anti-government right wing religious fundamentalists, a Constitution betrayed by [foreign fifth column Communist] non-believer pro-government Baal worshipers.

    Also, more tri-cornered hats and tea-bags.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The idiots of the Village are bound and determined to reinforce every bad thought I have about their inherent stupidity.

  7. 7.

    MattF

    Well, in fact there is something new on the Right– Fox News. And, in case you didn’t notice, the ‘Tea Party’ ‘movement’ (I don’t really want to put every word in quotes, but it’s unavoidable here) has an intimate relationship with Fox. And Fox’s (i.e., Murdoch’s) money.

  8. 8.

    quaint irene

    Constitution as an instrument directly inspired by God and put in place by Found

    I’m surprised they haven’t pushed for a bill changing the national anthem to ‘America the Beautiful’ cause it mentions God. Oh wait, the last line is ‘crown thy good with brotherhood.’ Can’t have that!

  9. 9.

    Tonybrown74

    The only thing that truly baffles me is the idea that people didn’t know this already. Why go through the bullshit pretense?

    Who are they (the media) trying to convince?

  10. 10.

    Kyle

    A new poll shows that half of those who consider themselves part of the tea party movement also identify as part of the religious right

    Oh, heavens to betsy, what could possibly surprise me more?

    People who believe in magical self-serving delusions in religion believe magical self-serving delusions in politics, who could have guessed.

    Next you’ll tell me that 95% vote Republikkklan.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @El Cid:

    Founding Fathers who were all anti-government right wing religious fundamentalists

    That high pitched whirring sound you’re hearing? Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and others rotating at near relativistic velocities in their graves.

  12. 12.

    kay

    @El Cid:

    It’s complex, El Cid. We may never figure it out.

    Just ignore that it looks exactly like the Bush 2004 Base, because it’s different.

    In ways we have yet to determine.

  13. 13.

    geg6

    “The way the data looks, if this is a marriage of convenience, it’s one that would be against the law. The relatives are too close,” said Jones, a self-described progressive.

    So this would be why so many of them seem mentally retarded?

  15. 15.

    UncommonSense

    Only half of self-identified teabaggers identify also as members of the religious right?

    I expect the real percentage is much higher than that. I went to the first-ever teabagger rally they held in Baton Rouge and there were as many signs proclaiming “This is a Christian nation” as there were pleading “Don’t tread on me.”

  17. 17.

    kay

    @UncommonSense:

    They’re more Christian than the Christians, actually.

    Fifty-five percent of people who say they are part of the tea party agree that “America has always been and is currently a Christian nation” – 6 points more than the percentage of self-described Christian conservatives who would say that.

  18. 18.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adrienne:

    Oh, no, I got El Cid’s snark. I applaud it. I relish it.

    The problem of course is the teatards actually believe that shit.

  19. 19.

    Ash Can

    LOLZ. These polls crack my shit right up. But then, in light of the fact that sometimes people have to be beaten over the head repeatedly with a fact before they start to believe it, if this makes any more people see the light about how phony this tea party bullshit is, it’s all good.

  21. 21.

    geg6

    @UncommonSense:

    Here in purple PA, currently run by godless Jew commie Ed Rendell, it’s 100% based on the Teabagger rallies they have every other weekend at our county courthouse.

    My John and I have decided that they have them so often because it’s really a fat, white, old, and racist speed dating service. Our staff assistant, a four-time divorcee and fervent “Christian,” attends them all. She’s trolling now that eHarmony turned her down for being “not their kind of material.”

  23. 23.

    Blue Neponset

    If you want to take the word of a “self-described progressive” be my guest. I’ll believe what Fox News tells me about the Tea Party.

  24. 24.

    aimai

    @El Cid:

    That is really, really, a smart observation, El Cid. On some level that’s a very profound connection to make. I think Susan of Texas would argue that its some kind of substition/fetish, an invocation of an imaginary powerful authority that “proves” that one is always right. When its god its god, when that doesn’t work substitute the constitution, when you control the presidency its the presidency, when you don’t control the presidency its the people…

    aimai

  25. 25.

    Brick Oven Bill

    The primary difference between the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party movement conducts events which are actually fun to attend, and potentially historic.

    The secondary difference between the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party Movement has more attractive female members.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    a comment from the WaPost reader thread:

    Gee, brilliant reporting. I don’t know how much the poll cost, but you could have figured this out with a 15 minute drive around South Carolina.

    The story is beyond fatuous.

  29. 29.

    Uloborus

    There’s a difference. They now think they can get and are entitled to representatives exactly as insane as they are, rather than being grudgingly content with power mad assholes.

    But they’re the same PEOPLE, yes.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @quaint irene:

    I’m surprised they haven’t pushed for a bill changing the national anthem to ‘America the Beautiful’ ‘God Bless America’ cause it mentions God.

    FTFY.

  33. 33.

    El Cid

    @aimai: Most of it was obvious when they (esp. Glenn Beck) kept citing The 5,000 Year Leap by crazy Mormon Bircherite New-World-Order paranoid and Glenn Beck favorite Cleon Skousen.

    If you read it (I have, it was given to me by a TeaTard advocate), you will see a mix of actual decent history on the origins of, and passing of the Constitution, along with increasing invocations of Biblical principles and religious Founding Father insights. The “28 principles” based on “natural law” as religious rightists see them.

    (That book is a million times saner than anything else Skousen did, earning him a place on the US Constitution Commission in 1987.)

    This religio-Constitutional view becomes clearer the more you talk to a Tea Partyist about their views of the Founding Father gods.

    Recently we’ve also been seeing Harvard historian Jill Lapore delve into this Colonial fundamentalist fetishism.

    Jill Lepore, a history professor at Harvard University and author of the soon-to-be-published The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, says agitated Americans have been expropriating various aspects of the American Revolution since 1776.
    __
    In her book, she points to George Ticknor Curtis, a Massachusetts attorney and historian who wrote The True Uses of American Revolutionary History in 1841. “He was hopping mad about the tea partiers of his day,” Lepore writes. “He was sick of people invoking the Revolution to ad­vance a cause. … He just wished people would study the Revolution instead of using it to make political arguments.”
    __
    In an interview, Lepore says, “What most people know about the American Revolution, they learned in elementary school.” Common understanding of the events leading up to, and following, the Declaration of Independence, Lepore says, “is a little bit comic-booky. It has a comic quality to it, an association with childhood, paper dolls, Johnny Tremain.”

    More on the book from the publisher:

    Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, offers a wry and bemused look at American history according to the far right, from the “rant heard round the world,” which launched the Tea Party, to the Texas School Board’s adoption of a social-studies curriculum that teaches that the United States was established as a Christian nation.
    __
    Along the way, she provides rare insight into the eighteenth-century struggle for independence–the real one, that is. Lepore traces the roots of the far right’s reactionary history to the bicentennial in the 1970s, when no one could agree on what story a divided nation should tell about its unruly beginnings. Behind the Tea Party’s Revolution, she argues, lies a nostalgic and even heartbreaking yearning for an imagined past–a time less troubled by ambiguity, strife, and uncertainty–a yearning for an America that never was.
    __
    The Whites of Their Eyes reveals that the far right has embraced a narrative about America’s founding that is not only a fable but is also, finally, a variety of fundamentalism–anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.

    It’s a way to integrate Constitutional / Founding Father fetishism with Christian fundamentalist Dominionism with Bircherite anti-Communism super-paranoia.

  34. 34.

    JAHILL10

    @El Cid: Nail, meet head of hammer. Thank you for saying it with such flair, it almost makes amusing my despair over the fact that this faction represents 27 percent of my country!

  37. 37.

    evinfuilt

    This is simply the most shocking news ever! I would never have known that they were the same thing. Glad they spent time polling.

  38. 38.

    PeakVT

    @aimai: Constitutional fundamentalism is a dumbed-down version of the original intent school of judicial … let’s call it judicial justification. Both use an appeal to authority to mask the real intentions of their proponents.

  43. 43.

    Comrade Dread

    Yes. And I expect that upon being elected, the Tea Party Republicans will buckle down and get straight to the business of getting re-elected by:

    a.) voting for increased government spending.
    b.) Voting for more war spending.
    c.) Voting for tax cuts to the upper class.
    d.) Forgetting about that whole deficit/debt crap.
    e.) Impeaching Obama and holding endless hearings about Wright-gate, Arugula-gate, and Birther-gate.
    f.) Bleat loudly to the Tea Party, the neo-Randians, and the Constitutional political fundamentalists who are waiting and expecting for a roll back of Washington to the 1780’s, that they just don’t:

    1.) Have the votes in Congress to do it
    2.) Can’t pass anything because Obama will just veto it.
    3.) To save Democracy and the Republic, please vote more of us into office in 2012 and give us the presidency. Then we super-duper-uper promise to get right on that government cutting thing.

  44. 44.

    El Cid

    TeaTards attack minority voter registration in Texas as the New ACORN Black Panther vote stealers.

    According to the lawsuit, [TeaTard anti-voting registration leader Catherine] Engelbrecht said — at an August meeting which featured DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams — that the Houston Votes headquarters is “the Texas office of the New Black Panthers.”
    __
    In a video on Engelbrecht’s King Street Patriots’ web site, you can see her refer to a building as the “New Black Panthers’ office,” to gasps from the audience. She then mentions that people around the building wear T-shirts that look “suspiciously” like Houston Votes T-shirts.
    __
    You may also remember King Street Patriots as the group that prominently posted a photo of a black woman photoshopped to look like she was carrying a sign that read, “I only got to vote once!”
    __
    Houston Votes is still operating — but now registering just 200 people a day, instead of some 1,000 before any allegations were made.

    Mission Accomplished!

    After all, if the Founding Fathers had intended darkies to vote, they would have put it in the Constitution which Moses handed them.

  45. 45.

    ppcli

    The tea party is there to allow people to distance themselves from their recent past, during which they not only supported Bush but did so with a lunatic intensity, swooning when he marched across the aircraft carrier in flightsuit and accusing people of being traitors and troop haters if they disagreed with even the smallest detail of the Cheney agenda. Now that Bush is toxic, and they find it politically convenient to start slamming Obama for things that Bush did even more than Obama does, they want to pretend that they hated it all along.

    Sort of like France after WWII. Suddenly, it turned out, everybody except Pétain himself was in the resistance. Nobody supported Vichy. It may have appeared that there were an awful lot of collaborators, but that was just an illusion.

  46. 46.

    Bulworth

    the tea party’s composition and potential impact is still under hot debate.

    Yes, we know so little about the makeup of this super duper non-bi-partisan group of teabaggers. It’s such a hot debate. I wonder if we’ll ever know.

  47. 47.

    Ash Can

    @Comrade Dread: You left out g) Get caught red-handed accepting bribes in a sting operation. ‘Cause you just know those dumb rubes wouldn’t be able to resist free shit, and they’d happily shake down every lobbyist on the Hill for as much as they possibly could.

  48. 48.

    El Cid

    @ppcli: It’s so disgusting. They all luuuuuuuurved Bush Jr. right up unto the point where his popularity began plummeting after Katrina.

    How was this different than stapling teabags on your hat?

  50. 50.

    daveNYC

    The secondary difference between the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party is that the Tea Party Movement has more attractive female members.

    Need to have a drink to wash the taste of vomit out of my mouth.

  51. 51.

    Tony J

    If you want to see the various strains of Teabaggery ripping their coalition of Disappointed Republican Voters to pieces before they’ve even won anything, then I really do suggest a dip or two into the American Conservative website.

    Apparently, the recent cat-fight over whether or not Holocaust Denial is a core conservative value or proof of Liberal tendencies has driven Pat Buchannan to conclude that it’s really the Democrats who are splitting apart, because a failing economy is bound to lead to turf wars between The Negro and The Hispanic over a shrinking welfare budget.

    Honestly, the jaw just gapes sometimes. These only thing that unites these people is that, somehow, Liberals are to blame for everything they fuck up.

  54. 54.

    Southern Beale

    Hmmm. That particular blend of bedfellows looks just like the traditional Republican base, to me. How are they new and different, again?

    DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING

    Thank you for playing!

    Jesus H. Christ I am so sick of the corporate media’s endless musing over “who and what is the Tea Party”? What utter bullshit.

    It’s the fucking same right wingers who were Loyal Bushies for the past 10 years and the anti-Clinton brigade before that. And when Bush proved to be such a disaster they all, amazingly, became part of the “I never liked him!” crowd.

    And our stoooopid media bought that lie. I mean how dumb is that?

    Who in here is tired of being right about everything? How did I, a silly little Tennessee housewife, know that Saddam didn’t have WMDs when the fucking New York fucking Times did not?

    How did I, a silly little Tennessee housewife, know that the “Tea Party” is the same Republican base we’ve always had since forever when fucking NBC News did not?

    Gah. I’m sick of our discourse in this country. SICK. OF. IT. I may be silly but I’m not stupid.

    /rant

  55. 55.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @El Cid:

    They’ve replaced public invocations of Old Testament vengeance with a Founding Father Fundamentalism which relies upon seeing the Constitution as an instrument directly inspired by God and put in place by Founding Fathers who were all anti-government right wing religious fundamentalists, a Constitution betrayed by [foreign fifth column Communist] non-believer pro-government Baal worshipers.

    I wonder what took them so long.

    I think a major reason the US Constitution was so durable is its aura of Holy Writ. It’s downright Rovean* how they’re trying to undermine the federal government by co-opting and re-interpreting the intellectual foundation of that government.

    *”Rovean” as in attacking their opponent’s strengths.

  57. 57.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Southern Beale:

    It’s the fucking same right wingers who were Loyal Bushies for the past 10 years

    It’s the same dumbasses who told John McCain that Obama was “a Arab” and, for that matter, the same ones who complain that the new people moving into town don’t cut their grass often enough or put their garbage cans in the agreed-upon location. Old people with too much time on their hands, time they mostly use to snoop at the neighbors.

    Why it’s an interesting phenomenon is a question for assignment editors to answer.

  58. 58.

    geg6

    @Elizabelle:

    I can’t think of a better place for Howie than the Daily Beast. Whadda piece of shit that site is. Makes HuffPo look like Shakespeare.

  59. 59.

    agrippa

    Almost all of those in the TP vote Republican. There may be a small number who vote Libertarian. Of course they are the GOP base. It is impossible for them to be anything else.

    Part of it is a wish/necessity to separate oneself from the GWB Presidency.

    We will see what happens on Nov 2. If Democrats get out and vote, the teapot will have a very large tempest. Akin to a conniption fit.

  60. 60.

    Citizen_X

    Yes, everybody with half a brain (that excludes the media) knew this meme about “the Tea Party is not really Christian(C) Righties” was bullshit about a millisecond after it was spouted.

    You know who else is a Teabagger, and a seriously crazy, “Obama’s plan is to destroy America from within*” one? Moe freaking Tucker, of the Velvet Underground. Apologies to all who, like me, were charmed by her singing “After Hours” or “I’m Sticking With You.”

    *Direct quote!

  62. 62.

    Southern Beale

    Moe Tucker?

    Jeebus. Well, she has an excuse. One assumes she killed many brain cells doing lots of cool drugs back in the day.

    At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  63. 63.

    Southern Beale

    Moe Tucker?

    Jeebus. Well, she has an excuse. One assumes she killed many brain cells doing lots of cool drugs back in the day.

    At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  65. 65.

    Citizen_X

    @geg6:

    Our staff assistant, a four-time divorcee and fervent “Christian,”

    Hmm. Let me guess: fervently opposed to gay marriage?

  66. 66.

    daryljfontaine

    Song here for meter:

    We’ve had it up to here
    We’d like to make it very clear
    That we’ll never vote our incumbent reps in again
     
    At least you say so, but
    You leave a small exception     (What?)
    Your rage does not apply to the Republican!
     
    Your populist cachet
    Has already grown passé
     
    Well, now you just sound French, or maybe Mexican
     
    But at last we know the truth
     
    There’s liberal bias to your “proof”
    Just try to describe us using all the facts you can
     
    Uh, let’s see…
    You’re the Tea Party     (Oh yes)
    You want less taxes (Impressive)
    Which means less government spending on…
    Wait — I got it!
    Social security!     (NO!)
    Medicare?
    Well, I’m sure you’d support ending wars that cost a ton.
     
    We need to end the welfare state!
     
    Yeah, now that you’ve loaded up your plate
    Ignore the obvious and listen to the spin again
    If the money doesn’t go to you
    And others need it, they should go screw
    Well, I’m pretty sure that makes you a Republican.

    There’s more to the song but that’s as far as I got in the name of parody.

    D

  67. 67.

    maskling

    i did not even have to click the link. i knew it could only be the washington post. only the WP would pretend this was a mystery. only the neo-con boostering, supply side supporting, republican whore WP could print shit like that with a straight face

  69. 69.

    Dennis SGMM

    I for one am convinced that there are plenty of non-Republican, non-fundamentalist, under-the-age-of-68 people in the Tea Party. They’re just shy about responding to polls.

  70. 70.

    Binzinerator

    @Sly:

    Tea Party is to Republican Party as Altria is to Phillip Morris.

    Shit dude you won the thread in the first comment.

    Next time wait a bit, even if it’s just to build the tension.

  72. 72.

    Binzinerator

    @El Cid:

    They’ve replaced public invocations of Old Testament vengeance with a Founding Father Fundamentalism which relies upon seeing the Constitution as an instrument directly inspired by God

    Pretty much parallels what these assholes did with replacing Creationism with Intelligent Design.

  73. 73.

    geg6

    @Citizen_X:

    Opposed to gay marriage, whorish single (never-married) women who have boyfriends (in other words, me), birth control (except for her own), abortion, taking prayer out of schools, the fact that America is NOT a Christian nation as she wishes, blacks, Mexicans, Middle Easterners, anyone who doesn’t look like her, alcohol (except when she wants a drink), recreational drugs (though she says she loved her debauched pot smoking days), single mothers (though she was one), Section 8 housing (though she once lived in it), welfare (though she once got it), unemployment insurance, Catholics and atheists equally, and Barack and Michelle Obama.

    Otherwise, she follows Jesus’ teachings to a T.

  74. 74.

    Elizabelle

    @geg6:

    Sort of agree.

    Beast is a lot of infotainment, although it’s still got a cleaner interface than the Huffington Post, which looks too much like one of those coupon mailers dumped out on your desktop.

    HuffPost is ADD inducing.

  75. 75.

    4jkb4ia

    I agree with this post taking into consideration that Kay has said these are not the elements of the Republican base that knock on doors and make phone calls.

  76. 76.

    Krill

    I think with all the left right action these days they just keep our eyes off the ball and the real trouble. The Fed! The guys spending us into BK who’s left or right won’t even matter in a decade if we keep spending at this rate.

Comments are closed.