It’s almost as if Chris Cillizza’s purpose in life is to administer life-saving resuscitation to every dumb beltway meme that’s on its last gasp. Today’s case in point includes this little bit of hackery:
[…] A March Washington Post-ABC News national poll showed that while tea party supporters are more Republican than Democratic, they are far from monolithic for the GOP. Thirty eight percent of tea party supporters identified themselves as Republicans while 14 percent called themselves Democrats. The biggest chunk — 39 percent — said they were independents. (The party ID among all adults in that poll broke down this way: 30 percent Democrats, 22 percent Republicans and 40 percent independents.)
I followed Chris’ link to the poll and the crosstab of party registration of tea party supporters he cites was not included. However, the overall poll was of 1,002 adults, 8% of whom said they “strongly” support the Tea Party, so Chris’ little what-if is based on the party registration of 80 Tea Party members. But, even if that crosstab were of any statistical significance, the obvious question is where the “Democrats” who are Tea Party members live. I’ll bet that most of them live in the South, and that they are old, so the “D” after their name is a relic from pre-Southern Strategy days. But acknowledging that the Tea Party is a bunch of old, white, male racists who have been voting Republican for 30 years and have been a key part of the Republican base since they were courted by Lee Atwater isn’t as fun as wondering if they’ll secede from their natural home party.
feebog
What were the other 8%? Whigs? No Nothings?
Baud
Reagan Democrats were Democrats also. I like our current crop of Democrats better.
GregB
@feebog:
Illinois Nazis.
Poopyman
@GregB: I fuckin’ hate Illinois Nazis.
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
And close to all of them vote Republican, but call themselves independent because they think the GOP is still just a little too commie.
Edited to Add: And also, as a previous commenter mentioned some time ago, to wipe the embarrassing smell Bush-Cheney from the bottom of their shoes.
JGabriel
@feebog:
Klan members.
Baud
@GregB:
Worst mascot in the NCAA, IMHO.
Linda Featheringill
@JGabriel:
“And close to all of them vote Republican, but call themselves independent because they think the GOP is still just a little too commie.”
:-)
But I’ll admit that this is true for some of them.
dmsilev
And I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of those “independents” actually vote Republican with a consistency that would be surprising to a Beltway pundit. So, that would be ~85% of the Tea Party that actually votes Republican. And that’s assuming, of course, that the small fraction who call themselves Democrats actually vote for, well, Democrats.
Poopyman
@Linda Featheringill: Hey, let me check something out …
:=|
… Just checking to see if that comes out as an Illinois Nazi.
Carry on.
ETA: Eh, would have been better if everything were centered.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Some of them likely vote for Dems at the state or local level, where you can find more wingnutty Democrats.
srv
Rush used to say independents are people with no morals. At least they like to dress up in outfits with stockings and whigs. Wonder what’s up with that.
Joel
The “tea party” isn’t going to be walking away from anything. Eventually they’ll be carried away, hopefully sooner than later, and they’re not going to have much decision in that matter.
big ole hound
Of course all of these “people” fall in that 27% and some were out of phone range in Bunkerville NV this past week.
GregB
The Tea Party will NOT walk away. They’ll drive away in their Lark scooters.
Murika Eff Yeah! Keep your big government out of my Medicare!
low-tech cyclist
@JGabriel:
Yeppers to all that.
If the Tea Party were to break away, it would of course be to create a party of the nutcase 27%. But why on earth would they do that?
As it is, they’re pretty much in control of the GOP, which means that the strength of the almost-but-not-quite-insane 20% of the electorate that makes up the rest of the GOP is added to theirs in national politics. Why on earth would they throw that away? They aren’t that dumb or that crazy, not yet at least.
TR
Go read the report from Bundy ranch that’s at the top of Charles Pierce’s Esquire blog. That’s the Tea Party base and the only place they’re going is insane.
Stillwater
I think there are a couple of concepts of the Tea Party out there which muddle up statistical analyses like the one you quote. At a minimum, there’s a distinction between the first gen TP deriving from Ron Paul’s campaign which was primarily focused on ensmallening gummint, severing corporate control of policy formation, and reducing total spending and what the TP became once the Koch Bros, SoCons, and Hannity-types got aholt of it. I can very easily see someone who identifies as a liberal and votes D being supportive of TP 1.0, so maybe something like that is what’s going on here.
Emma
@TR: Jeebus Kriist. That is a scary view into the Underworld.
TR
@Emma:
Right?
Obama should make a speech about the dangers of drinking paint, and cite a UN report in the process. These idiots would off themselves within the hour.
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: Orson Scott Card, who opposes and agutates against every single element of the contemporary Democratic platform, calls himself a Democrat. The party left him, you see.
WaterGirl
@TR: Is Charlie Pierce really not on the BJ blogroll? Or am I missing something? I looked under C for Charlie, P for Pierce, E for Esquire .
hilts
Chris Cillizza is paralyzed from the neck up.
WaterGirl
@Emma: Wow, those people are truly nuts.
p.a.
The tea potty will go wherever the money funnel goes. I can envision some big money boyz who are true believers and not amoral cynics (Koch’s? I don’t know. I know it’s not Shelly) dumping the grandkids’ inheritance into a 3rd party, and have the tricorne hats follow.
pseudonymous in nc
Isn’t “independent = Republican who thinks he’s a special snowflake” pretty much cut and dried now in polling?
RaflW
As usual, pointless blather from The Fix.
Who the bleep cares what their party ID is? My dad and my uncle both “resigned” from the GOP 20 years ago. They continued to vote for Republicans. Pretty much all the time.
They could just have some sort of personal self-shame cleanse since they “weren’t Republicans” any more.
Its internal Kabuki, the voting is the same whether the Tea Partiers say they’re GOPers or not.
Mike in NC
What if Chris Cillizza took a long walk into Beltway traffic? It could happen (hope springs eternal).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TR: Excellent, all they need is the 911 truthers to complete the fruitcake. If Bundy is the Tea Party of The FUTURE(tm) then I can see them leaving the GOP because the GOP isn’t paranoid enough.
Cacti
@pseudonymous in nc:
I think it’s more “Republican who’s embarrassed to cop to the label”.
Villago Delenda Est
Mistermix, please. You’re implying strongly that Cizilla did not bother to do his homework on the details. Cizilla is Villager vermin. OF COURSE he did not do any homework. He’s far too lazy and smug to do so.
smintheus
That 14% who say they’re Democrats of the grand total of 80 Teabaggers would amount to about 11 respondents. Nationally. Several of whom might be lying.
NCSteve
DC hack pundits are to political science as global warming deniers are to climate science. All DC hack punditry about electoral politics is built upon denial of one bedrock empirical finding of voter behavior research: almost every voter almost always votes for the candidates of a single party in every election and that party identification is independent of registration. “Swing voters” are a tiny fraction of the electorate. And that party identification for voting purposes is the only thing that matters.
All Beltway electoral punditry, however, is based upon an absolute denial of this empirically established reality because acknowledging it makes it far harder to concoct contrarian hoo-hah and horse race behind the bandwagon stories.
Chris
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
Joey Maloney
@dmsilev: To be fair, the fact that the ball still exists when it’s placed under the bucket would be surprising to a Beltway pundit.
Chris
@low-tech cyclist:
Either that or the GOP is in control of them, because money is the glue that holds it all together.
Teabaggers may bitch about “the elites,” “the establishment” or whatever, but every single last thing they worship as “truly conservative” runs on money from these same elites – from the wingnut media network (some of which operates at a loss and only exists because Republican zillionaires are willing to take that loss), to their “grassroots” evangelical networks operating from megachurches rich on wingnut welfare, to all of the political stars that they think are “on their side,” “not that kind of politician,” etc (everyone from Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin).
Who’s going to lead the teabaggers in revolution against the “establishment?” Which politician would be willing to crawl out from under the warm blanket of wingnut welfare in the name of “true conservatism?” Palin? LOL.
And even supposing that one of their politicians does find the courage to really run against the establishment, how long do we think the teabaggers will stick by him once all of their gurus – Fox News, the church networks, etc – open up on that politician with both barrels, calling him a RINO, a saboteur and a liberal?
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev: Well, if we were in the 1960s, and we were in the Old Confederacy, yes, they WOULD vote for Democrats.
But that ship berthed in Shanghai 40 years ago.
patrick II
Given the difference between the stated positions of the Democratic party and Teabaggers, only a very confused person could be both a Democrat and a Teabagger.
Oh. I see the problem.
Patrick
@smintheus:
It’s hard to say. There are Democrats who are racists as well.
MattF
@dmsilev: This is the point that has to be made. And I’m very sure that Cillizza knows it. He just prefers to pretend that ‘tea party’ is a kind of non-partisan designation.
Frankensteinbeck
@Stillwater:
The first generation Teabaggers were derived from a wall street trader complaining about how liberals were giving his money to Those People. It was immediately, and I mean immediately, scooped up by Glenn Beck and the conspiracy theories he spread to his followers. Koch money encouraged all of this, because they’re lunatics. There are no fiscal conservatives. There are people who want to fuck the poor (usually because they think ‘poor’ = ‘black’) and people who don’t.
@Chris:
The establishment did not want the debt ceiling showdown or the government shutdowns. Those things hurt the Chamber of Commerce. The lunatics cheering the shutdown in the House are very much a rebellion against the party leaders, which is why you’ve had (failed) attempts to create PACs to counter Tea Party candidates. Money is critical, but rich people are not a monolithic group and the lunatics like the Kochs are willing to dump much more money to encourage lunatic politics than the traditional, sane, but greedy and assholish money boys.
Ben
I put the over-under on “yeah but those independents vote Republican in overwhelming numbers” at comment 15
Well done, BJ’ers, well done
Mnemosyne
@Patrick:
Lyndon LaRouche is a registered Democrat.
Snarki, child of Loki
If you want to know if Teabaggers are really “Democrats” or “Independent”, just ask them how many times they voted AGAINST Dubya.
Well, assuming they tell the truth, which might not be such a good bet. Weaseling and incoherent answers can be taken as “Zero times”.