Nate Silver looks at the polls and says the Tea Party is genuinely growing unpopular among most Americans. Obviously, I’m no fan of teatards and I think that the American public is right to look unfavorably at them. But also too I think this is happening because the media has branded the Tea Party as insufficiently serious.
We’re being set up to be told that Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels is a serious Burkean intellectual unlike those idiots who wave the Don’t Tread On Me flag. I can feel it in my bones.
WereBear
Actually, that’s the first encouraging news I’ve heard in a while.
It also suggests there’s a bus with “Tea Party” emblazoned on it, and it’s not to take them to Glenn Beck rallies.
BombIranForChrist
Yeah, I think this is right.
At the end of the day, the USA is a corporate entity and it will not tolerate whack jobs in high office.
Businesses obviously want to pay as few taxes as possible and follow as few regulations as possible, but they also want stability, and the Teatards are a destructive force.
And since Media in the US is driven by business, it’s only a matter of time before the Great Seriousness falls on the GOP and the Teatards are marginalized, useful only for doing the bidding of the Koch Brothers et al.
Huntly
Two thumbs way up for this! Most of the GOP field is just a distraction to make people like TPaw or Daniels seem normal.
eemom
sorta OT, but not entirely (cuz he’s, like, “the media”) Jake Tapper just showed up again on the a.m. thread and says he’s been reading it along.
Some heads are gonna roll…..
BGinCHI
Follow the Rove.
Spaghetti Lee
I suspect that the last people to get this news will be the Tea Party themselves, and I hope they keep ignoring it long enough that they stay home in a snit because the GOP didn’t have a Walker/Palin ticket in 2012.
mr. whipple
@Huntly:
Yup.
Too bad they’re all nuts, just that some hide it better.
Gian
when voters can register as “tea party” and it fields candidates that aren’t just the Bircher Wing of the GOP I’ll call it a party.
until then they’re still tea baggers, despite the rebranding BS in calling them a party
mr. whipple
@Spaghetti Lee:
I don’t think that will happen. The idea will be for the teatard losers to bring along their supporters.
Comrade DougJ
@eemom:
I’ll admit, I’m pro-Jake Tapper. I’ve been very impressed with how he’s comported himself when he stops by here and he and Amanpour do a better Sunday show than the competition.
priscianus jr
If that’s so, then the GOP is facing a dilemma. Their candidate is going to have to talk like the Tea Party but nor be perceived as TP. Can they finesse that? TP is not just about image, it’s about saying things and taking positions. The TP will insist on that. If the candidate is not perceived as Tea Party, the base will not come out, and may even work actively to undermine him. But if the candidate IS perceived as Tea Party, nobody else will vote for him.
Linnaeus
I think Digby’s take is pretty sensible, too.
Zifnab
That’s not really an ideal way to win elections. A lot of the grassroots Tea-haddists might be incredibly naive and dumb as a box of rocks, but they’re very sincere. This is a populist revolt that the GOP managed to channel for the last two years. It’s not going to magically disappear because the WaPo editorial board and the RNC have decided to abandon the project.
If the GOP and the Beltway Press really do try to cut bait, I suspect we’ll see a new Ross Perot candidate in ’12. All that energy has got to go somewhere.
DarrenG
I was with you yesterday, but you lost me here. I can see a number of factors behind this that don’t require a Vast Conspiracy to sell us the next Manchurian Candidate:
– Even at the movement’s peak, fewer people self-identified as teahadists than did as socialists. It just wasn’t that big a movement at any time. Media coverage was always excessive and destined to regress to the mean.
– Excessive coverage last year was mostly during the months when the only other game in town was health care reform, and it was easier and more colorful and shouty to cover the people with weird hats on mobility scooters than it was trying to figure out what a medical loss ratio was.
– A movement that doesn’t really stand for anything other than “we like Glenn Beck, not that colored feller” was destined to run out of steam in short order.
I’m sure there’s more…
Moonbatting Average
I think the Tea Party has been doing a fantastic job of branding themselves as unserious without the media’s help.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
I’m curious to see how the teatards react to their marginalization.
General Stuck
It is because the tea tards are completely fucking insane, and shit rolls downhill, just takes a little longer.
Bob Loblaw
@priscianus jr:
I swear, it’s like you guys completely missed the 2010 midterms.
Go ask Sens. Coats, Portman, Kirk and Toomey about the “arduous balancing act” necessary to come to power.
You can’t spend all day snarking at how spectacularly stupid the teabaggers are, and then spend the next day wondering how such dumbshits could possibly be tricked into supporting rank corporatist candidates.
GregB
You can scratch Polenta off the list. He’s gone full Earl Grey tea-bag.
Mitch Daniels just needs some lifters in his shoes and he’s the dreamiest one of all.
Unless Joe Klein gets his schweeniest wish and Jeb Bush comes out of the woodwork to save A-murka.
Social outcast
I’d say the declining popularity is due to people talking to tea party types at work and realizing that the entire group of them are too hardcore, too stubborn, and really kind of creepy.
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade DougJ: Come down and help me convince him to revive the comic strip he used to draw for the Dartmouth College newspaper. It was pretty good! “Static Cling,” it was called.
Mark S.
In other words, the teabaggers have never been that popular. Someone should inform the media.
Ana Gama
The teabagger rally at the capitol today drew a couple hundred people….most of them journalists and congress critters.
Just sayin…
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_03/028725.php
Suffern ACE
I think it might behoove the left side to stop calling them Tea Partiers or Tea Baggers and start referring to them as “Mainstream Republicans.” These are republicans and they have republican ideas just like the former Minnesota governor. It would behoove the democrats not to allow the “moderate” republicans, who are still bad for the country, to create a bad bank of toxic tea assets off balance sheet where it can be hidden from investors until it blows up.
I don’t see the media backers of this movement – Redstate, Worldnet Daily, Fox and the like like calming any of their readers down until Obama is out of office.
PeakVT
But also too I think this is happening because the media has branded the Tea Party as insufficiently serious.
This will hardly make up for the media promoting what was obviously a retread for the past two years.
Amanda in the South Bay
I dunno how you all are able to discuss these posts without massive amounts of profanity and insults. Everytime I read about Burkean man crushes that the villagers have, I want to call Brooks, Klein, et al the nastiest insults around.
Elia
I’m always a little skeptical of theories that rest on the public giving a fuck about how the media is framing issues. I don’t doubt that it’s significant–even very–but to this degree..? Isn’t it more likely that the whole thing’s just gotten old to a lot of people…and they’re not thrilled with how even with a tea party congress (not really but i’d imagine most think so) the economy isnt gangbusters?
Cermet
As long as the kook brothers make billions raping the US, own the congress and fund the stupid tanks, and have the inferior court of the land lick their ass, we will have these insane groups acting up against their real interest but you see, as long as asswipe child molesting religious leaders can say that what matters is family values, not Jobs, then the kook brothers always win.
Thank God Christ didn’t live today, he’d be drawn and quartered using SUV’s driven by the kook brothers and cheered on by the laughable people who call themselves Christians.
feebog
@zinfab:
Uh, no. This is not a populist movement. It is an astroturfed kabuki dance funded by the Koch Brothers and brought to you by Dick Armey. As noted upthread, they staged a huge rally in D.C. today. The journalists outnumbered the Baggers. The Tea Party was a fully funded front group created to smear and stop the Affordable Health Care Act. It is going to fade into obscurity unless the Koch brothers continue to fund it.
James E Powell
Just like when they told us that George W. Bush wasn’t like those partisan fanatics who impeached the president. He could work across the aisle.
Benjamin Cisco (mobile)
@Amanda in the South Bay: Alcohol helps. No, wait…
bemused
@Huntly:
As a Minnesotan, I can testify that Timmy Toolittle is not even close to normal.
Marmot
Who among you loves the 27 Percenters?
Heck yes, I do. And that 27-or-so-percent of Americans is going to stay washed up on the shores of crazy until it becomes clear to them that America’s not really with ’em. It’ll take longer than the run-up to the 2012 elections, regardless of the media portrayal. They already think the media is against ’em anyway.
sherifffruitfly
So sick of the incessant “true progressive” whiny ass titty baby handwringing about how EVERYTHING “clearly must be good news for republicans”.
You’re a tool.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Prior performance does indicate future results.
The 27 Percenters thought they had everything they could’ve wanted as of January 2003. What they got was two quagmires, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, a dead Terry Schiavo, and the biggest economic meltdown since Carter laid squarely at their flightsuited hero’s footsteps. The cherry on their shit sundae comes when a black community activist with a funny name gets elected President.
What you’ve seen since then is a base in full riot, with corporate grifters using their fury to grab anything that’s not nailed down – and then grab a crowbar to take that too. They’re riding the tiger by the tail and clinging for dear life, but its the only ride left in town.
Grab your popcorn. The next twelve plus months of GOP primaries are going to be one hell of a show.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
*does not indicate future results
FYWP, where’d my edit button go.
Marmot
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: As much as your handle is gonna make ABL flip her lid, you’re onto something.
I have no idea what Doug J thinks is going to make the 27 Percenters abandon tri-corner fervor for Pawlenty or Daniels. And without that 1/3 of voters, the Repubs can’t mount a serious offense in the next election. I could be wrong, but I read this as good news for Dems.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Comrade DougJ: I agree with this, FWIW.
rikyrah
you might be right, but they have to get little Timmy and Indiana Napoleon past the GOP Primaries…when you figure that out, get back to me.
Benjamin Cisco (mobile)
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): An image of Glenn Close, a pot of boiling water, and an extremely unlucky rabbit come to mind.
priscianus jr
@Bob Loblaw:
DougW
@sherifffruitfly: Funny, we say that about you too. What a world!
cleek
yup.
everybody had their fun in 2010. now they know it’s time to pretend to be serious again.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Zifnab:
I agree with both this and Doug J’s point that
They are not mutually exclusive. Just noticed that, damn, I’m agreeable tonight. Must be the methocarbamol. Heh.
priscianus jr
@Marmot:
“You can’t spend all day snarking at how spectacularly stupid the teabaggers are, and then spend the next day wondering how such dumbshits could possibly be tricked into supporting rank corporatist candidates.”
So, to recalibrate my reply to Mr Loblaw, the point is not whether the Tea Partiers are smart enough or not smart enough to see through the corporatists. The point is that it really doesn’t matter, because either way the GOP’s got a big problem. That’s what I meant in saying they are “facing a dilemma.”
Joey Maloney
@BombIranForChrist: This would be more persuasive if the former incarnations of the Tea Party – the Moral Majority, and all of its successor Xtian Right cash-from-rubes-separating-scams – hadn’t had a thirty-year run. They were just as irrational, just as obviously crazy, just as destructive, and yet they’ve spent thirty years winning elections by getting people to vote against their own economic interests.
Carol
@Joey Maloney: But the numbers aren’t there anymore. It was disgruntled Reagan Democrats who gave a lof of this stuff electoral heft, and they are mostly gone now and replaced by younger and browner cohorts. Who the Tea Party people don’t like.
Paul in KY
@Comrade DougJ: I have exchanged a few emails with him when he was at Salon. Never had a problem with him back then. He’s become more villagy when he hit the big time, but he’s certainly better than most all of the others (IMO).
Paul in KY
@Suffern ACE: They should be called ‘The Teabagger Wing of the Republican Party’. In any writeup by a frontpager, that is.
More vile epithets are OK too. Also.
Paul in KY
@James E Powell: Because he worked with the Texas ‘Democrats’, who are just like the real Democrats.