I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. As usual, voters are way ahead of professional national opinion leaders. To borrow a phrase used in the article, the Tea Party is now “less an abstraction” to the people who actually live in Tea Party districts, as opposed to the national narrative creators who don’t live in these districts.
Support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — has fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds, according to an analysis of new polls.
In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the movement has risen significantly since it powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections; almost as many people disagree with it as agree with it, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center.
The analysis suggests that the Tea Party may be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives just a year ago. Other polls have shown a decline in support for the Tea Party and its positions, particularly because its hard line during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction made it less an abstraction than it was a year ago. In earlier polls, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to offer an opinion.
I’m just guessing here, but maybe people watching the insane debt limit fight from out here in the cheap seats thought it was stupid and counterproductive and reckless, rather than principled and worthwhile? Maybe they’re noticing that Tea Party House members never actually get any work done?
Samara Morgan
Election 2012: Escape from Distributed Jesusland
Jennifer
It never ceases to amaze me that some people have to see this kind of foolishness before it dawns on them that yes, it really DOES matter that the people you elect to office are sane and smart.
Yutsano
Name one accomplishment by the Tea Party movement since the election. Just one. They have been total Do-Nothings since election. And most went in saying they didn’t care if they were one-termers but they were going to do SOMETHING dammit! Their rhetoric coming back to bite them brings me joy. Let’s get Nancy her 24 (?) seats to flip the House.
Oh and the Democratic Senate candidate is leading in North Dakota.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Jennifer:
Sadly, for this very reason, I’m holding my breath to see whether this low support will translate into any actual loss or damage to their influence. I imagine way too many people who, despite disliking the Tea Party, will still support them full bore because the only other alternative is to agree with a DFH Demo-rat commie.
The Bearded Blogger
Eh… I think most voting Americans are insane and have occasional bouts of sanity, rather than the opposite.
This too shall pass…
Howlin Wolfe
Maybe people have figured out that imposing the wingnut wet-dream of low taxes and no regulation for the 1% and austerity on the rest of us is not going to create a utopia of freedom and prosperity (except for the 1%).
daveNYC
Once again proving that we are a center-right nation. Or something.
...now I try to be amused
Well, they nearly caused the US government to default. And they forced Speaker Boehner to work around them. That’s something, right?
c u n d gulag
@Yutsano:
They helped lower the countries credit rating, costing jobs, and increasing the deficit.
They’ve greased the wheels for future anti-choice, anti-women, anti-labor, anti-child, anti-immigrant, anti-poverty, legislation.
They’ve helped keep the country in the Recession/Depression.
Oh, wait!
I’m sorry – you meant POSITIVE accomplishments!
Never mind………
Redshift
Or, alternatively, that they’re dragging down the Republican Party because they ushered in a new Republican majority.
Benjamin Franklin
I think Occupy has stirred up some dust for the ‘Muddle’. Polls show Obama getting some lift in his favorables until recently. The debates had more to do with that, since he’s trending down now. The debates brought the occupiers of the GOP clown car into clear focus, so they’ve got THAT going for them.
Tone In DC
Even the damn Times has to admit that the alleged Taxed Enough Already idjits are rather insane. I’m surprised they printed that.
Not that the Kaplan-School-of-Profit Post will do anything like that anytime soon.
The Bearded Blogger
@Howlin Wolfe: Not quite. They think their representative sucks, but they still believe in the mighty job creating power of the job creators.
Redshift
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
I don’t expect many TPers to vote for Democrats, but there is a third option, which is to stay home in disgust. That works, too.
Tone In DC
@c u n d gulag:
Lulz.
Schlemizel
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
I’m with you on this. The average voter wants easy, painless solutions and the teabaggers offered them. I think a lot of that thinking helped Dems in ’08 because the Republicans had shown themselves to be incapable of managing government. This could lead to some wide swings back and forth but For simple (and wrong) answers plus aversion to the DFHs I wouldn’t count on the bottom falling out of the stupid bucket just yet.
ornery
Many times I’ve been heartened at signs American’s were waking up to the truth.
Someone always gives the
citizenspopulace a sleeping pill, and they always take it.Special Patrol Group
@Yutsano:
Name one accomplishment by the Tea Party movement since the election. Just one.
Well, they yelled “Socialism!” in one voice with such force and frequency that they managed to get the Olde Country Buffet to refill the tapioca bin. So there’s that.
(shamelessly ripped off from Chuck Pierce.)
Redshift
@The Bearded Blogger: Job creationists now, job creationists forever!
cmorenc
How about including some percentage figures from the analysis to give proper context to evaluate the claimed diminution of Tea Party support among voters? I trust that the article quoted includes enough survey info to solidify the claims of significant erosion in Tea Party Support, because if that’s true it’s a great development toward better electorate sanity going into 2012. However, without that info, we have no basis on which to evaluate the extent to which the author/survey taker has statistically solid backing, or on the other hand the extent to which they might be stretching a molehills worth of movement into a mountain, or parading anecdotal evidence as statistics.
I WANT this to be true, I do. But how about giving some of the underlying hard facts, and not merely some colorful broad-brush painting of the situation?
The Bearded Blogger
@Tone In DC: The populist movement angrily calling for tax cuts for the rich and cutting benefits for the people is rather insane?
Noooo…
Redshift
@Schlemizel: Mencken rules, as always: “There is always an easy solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong.”
Corollary: Running on that solution is always more effective than acknowledging that the problem is harder than that. (As long as you can find a solution that isn’t too crazy or too obviously wrong, which is the tricky part.)
Argive
Years from now, historians will look back on this era and conclude that a vast wave of irrational stupidity swept the country. We certainly live in interesting times.
handsmile
Happily though, GOP primary voters and caucus-goers still appear eager to support presidential candidates who sing zestfully from the Tea Party hymn book.
I’ll believe that the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is losing influence when the poll numbers begin to rise for the Mormon former governor of Massachusetts.
Until then, while the Tea Party may be “less of an abstraction”, it will be the concrete block tied to GOP prospects in 2012.
bemused
I haven’t noticed many rah, rah Chip Cravaack letters in the local papers lately. Come to think of it, I don’t remember the last time Chip has even been mentioned by the usual rightwing commenters….a big tell.
khead
The Tea Party is perfect for the House.
The rest of government? Not so much.
burnspbesq
@cmorenc:
Yanno, you could always take the extraordinarily difficult step of clicking on the link.
Schlemizel
@bemused:
I think Chiper was a bit hurt by changing his district, he went from pretending to be a Congressman from Minnesota to be a Congressman from New Hampshire. That has to sting the Iron Range baggers a bit.
Schlemizel
@khead:
The OUThouse maybe, yes
ericblair
It’s one thing to nod along with radicals chanting coulda-shoulda-woulda, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and building lovely models of better societies, and it’s quite another thing to let the radicals try to run things and get something useful done.
In particular, the teabaggers showed the common weakness of upstart movements by ignoring local concerns for big national pie-in-the-sky concepts. The strength of the old guard Bible-bashing goopers was their long-term bottom-up focus on taking over the town councils and school boards by at least pretending to care about constituent problems, then using that as a farm team for bigger offices. The teabaggers decided, fuck the potholes, we’re taking over the world, and nothing got done.
Villago Delenda Est
@Argive:
Most assuredly in the old Chinese curse sense of “interesting times.”
Tone In DC
@The Bearded Blogger: @c u n d gulag:
Lulz.
More LULz.
Maybe Ruth Marcus will raise herself from the fainting couch (kinda crowded there, with Lindsay Graham, Bachmann Michele Overdrive and Kathleen Parker on there) long enough to write such a piece for the Post.
slippy
@Redshift: OH, MY, GOD, that is a wonderful construction. “Job Creationists.” Did you just make that up?
I guarantee you I will use the ever-loving shit out of it. Brilliant.
Benjamin Franklin
I am very familiar with the mindset of the true believers (in the Eric Hoffer, sense)
One quality they have in abundance; tenacity. Taken to it’s extreme, (which is the case 75% of the time) tenacity becomes, obsessiveness.
Irrational preoccupation with your own pov, is a recipe for disaster. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating them. They can, (from their perspective) logically argue the sky is not blue, but red, if necessary. The die has been cast for these folks. They are immutable, fixed signs.
But their strength is also their weakness.
RalfW
Somewhat underplayed in the Times story:
Favorables for Republican Party in TP districts: 41%
Favorables for Democratic Party in TP districts: 39%
As these are probably aggregate #s, I don’t know that there’s a fromal margin of error. But I’d hazard a guess that the favorables for Dems and Reps in Tea Party districts is basically equivalent.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your Republican Party at work! Pissing off even it’s own base, not to mention the general public. Awesome.
Gex
Move the TPers to England and you would quickly and easily be able to see that they are on the side of the crown and not the people. Or the exact opposite of the actual Tea Party.
nepat
@Yutsano:
Not true. They read the Constitution out loud and maintained “In God We Trust” as our national motto.
kay
@cmorenc:
I don’t know if it’s “true”. I don’t really consider polling to be “hard facts”. I usually approach polling as one piece in a picture, honestly.
If you want the actual poll, it’s linked in the article, but here goes.
I don’t think you should consider it “true”, actually. I think it’s just a poll that says people in Tea Party districts are turning against the Tea Party.
What I like about the piece is that it’s specific. It looks at individual districts rather than saying “Americans ARE…” or “this country IS…” Know what I mean? I think it’s a big country, and these national narratives don’t reflect that.
RalfW
Oh, and
Thank g*d for that. Any “work” they’d do would be better characterized as Godzilla stomping across the heartland.
Schlemizel
Granted its from politicho but I love the theme it plays with
GOP worried about losing jobs message
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/69369.html
gbear
@Redshift: Yep, that worked like a charm for the republicans when the purity democrats stayed home in 2010. I hope it turns around in 2012.
Linda Featheringill
@cmorenc:
Hard data:
The NYT article linked to this page from Pew research.
http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/29/more-now-disagree-with-tea-party-%E2%80%93-even-in-tea-party-districts/
kay
@RalfW:
I think they talk about themselves, and their “movement”, too much. That’s okay when you’re not representing a group of people, but I imagine it gets old if you’re in their district.
They’re supposed to talk about the people they represent, always, constantly, because they’re representatives. Most people aren’t going to be interested in the Broader Theory of the Tea Party. No one gives a shit. They’re supposed to be speaking for other people.
As a practical matter, that means talking about local issues, and how those issues relate to the federal government, and to do that they have know something about local issues. Which is probably why they talk about themselves and their movement so much :)
bemused
@Schlemizel:
Possibly, after all the screaming from rightwingers here about Oberstar not living on the Range and being out of touch, just months in office Chippy did the NH move. The hard right aren’t saying much about Chip these days but that doesn’t mean they are ever going to vote for a Dem.
RalfW
@Schlemizel: Just read the article. Of course my first reaction is that the GOP is loosing the messaging war because they haven’t actually done anything positive. At all.
But anyway.
What caught my eye was this gem from the man soon to loose his job to Elizabeth Warren:
Try and parse that! Economic activity will pay for the next tax cut, even though the last tax cut didn’t get paid for, though it should have created the economic activity to pay for it.
They do persist in their magical thinking that tax cuts automatically pay for themselves.
Big picture, though, it’s obvious from the article that the GOP doesn’t give a shit about human suffering. They don’t appear to see any value in alleviating hunger, homelessness or despair.
Nope. Just ship ’em off to the work house if they’re down on their luck.
If I had a time machine, I’d send the whole House freshman class to Dickensian London with no jobs and a few rags for clothes. See how long before they’d be awash in tears of self-pity and anguish.
agrippa
I do not know.
I do not think that very many Republican voters are going to vote against their party. I think that they will stay home rather vote Democratic.
It is good to see that some people are starting to pay attention.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gbear: If purity Democrats stayed home, there were very few of them. The base turned out in its usual percentage, blacks turned out in greater numbers than average. But the right turned out in significantly larger numbers than normal. And the people who only vote in presidential elections did not vote in the midterms. One could argue that people should be voting more often, but as it’s been said before, it wasn’t the base’s fault.
agrippa
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
It is my understanding that is what happened.
kay
@cmorenc:
I’ll put it to you this way. The Tea Party is a concept, right? It’s a narrative. It had no real (expressed) form or shape, because it was (supposedly) a set of ideas or “principles”. But it’s something else now. It’s a group of actual people, and some of them got elected.
I just get a huge kick out of the collision between those two things.
I don’t know which one is “true”, but I would lean towards the reality, rather than the theory :)
They can tell me anything they want about “The Tea Party”, what it is, what it stands for, for what it “means”, whatever. But for me, I’d go to the people represented by the Tea Party to tell me about the Tea Party, because, well, they’d know, right?
numbskull
@gbear:
Didn’t Nate Silver and others debunk this? The hardcore right voted in droves and won. Their GOTV efforts were better.
jharp
T.E.A. Taxed.Enough.Already. After Obama cut taxes for 95% of us.
The TEA Party never made any sense. It was just a collection of stupid redneck white trash whining about losing an election.
I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. But then again Americans are the dumbest fucking people on the planet.
Jewish Steel
You’re too good for this world. Stay the course TPers! Your reward lies in Reagan. Uh, heaven, that is.
khead
@Schlemizel:
The House has always been full of reactionaries. Not endosring them, just sayin…..
feebog
This story is an interesting counterpoint to the dozens of pundits arguing that Barney Frank’s retirement proves that Democrats can not regain the House in 2012. To a person, they believe Frank would not be retiring if he thought he would once again be Chairman of the House Finance Committee. Maybe some nugget of truth to that, but it completly ignores some measurable facts; such as redistricting in Texas, California, Arizona and Illinois which will almost certainly result in seven to nine new Democrats. Yes, some of that will be offset by losses in New England states, and gerrymandering in other states dominated by Republican legislatures, but Democrats will still start with a small advantage.
Not considered at all by any of these pundits is the national mood and how it is beginning to turn against Republicans across the country. How many of those 60 new Republican representatives are vulnerable? I would guess at least forty to fifty. It is going to be an interesting election year for sure.
The Republic of Stupidity
And yet they still manage to eat up a paycheck and use their govt mandated socialist medical plans…
Impressive, innit?
The Republic of Stupidity
@jharp:
Sorry, but that is a bit racist…
Plantsmantx
I think a lot of Tea Party supporters became less enamored of the movement when they realized that the people they sent to Congress are hardcore ideologues and/or are controlled by hardcore ideologues who intend to apply their ideology to white people, too.
jrg
Stupid people learn by getting burned from doing stupid shit. Story at 11.
Mnemosyne
@agrippa:
As I keep reminding some of the whiners here, staying home is effectively a vote for the other party. If conservatives choose to sit out the election rather than vote for the Republican, I’m all for it.
MagicPanda
To be pedantic, if someone sits out an election, that’s worth HALF a vote for the other party.
100 Republicans sitting out is the same as 50 Republicans voting for Democrats.
jefft452
@Plantsmantx: “…who intend to apply their ideology to white people, too.
This
Swing voters mentality: “I vote for D’s to give free ponies to the truly deserving, (like me) and I vote R to take away the free ponies from the undeserving (like you)”
When St Ronnie bestrode Washington like a colossus, FDR’s America still existed, and you could build a coalition of 51% deserving vs 49% undeserving
Today, with inequality what it is, you cant screw over 49% without screwing over a lot of the 51%
See: Ryan, Paul, budget
See also the Mississippi fetus personhood vote – cant take away birth control the “bad” sluts without hurting the “good” wives & mothers
You can still build a coalition of the deserving 80-90% vs the undeserving 10-20%
Which is why I think OWS has a more effective message then the Tea Party