Allahpundit announces: “Takeover: 71% of Republicans now tea-party supporters.”
Attached to the piece is this poll and analysis:
In the survey, 71% of Republicans described themselves as tea-party supporters, saying they had a favorable image of the movement or hoped tea- party candidates would do well in the Nov. 2 elections.
Already, the tea-party movement has helped to oust a number of incumbents and candidates backed by party leaders in this year’s GOP primaries amid complaints that they lacked commitment to small-government principles. The poll findings suggest that the rising influence of the movement, with its push to cut spending and oppose the Democratic agenda, will drive the GOP to become more conservative and less willing to seek common ground on policy.
“These are essentially conservative Republicans who are very ticked-off people,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.
***Mr. McInturff said the tea-party movement had not necessarily drawn new people into the GOP. Rather, he said, “a substantial chunk of the Republican Party is rebranding themselves.”
Look, I know our idiot media is too silly to figure this out, and even if they could, they wouldn’t bother to cover it in detail because then they would miss out on all the breathless reports about the upsurge in tea party patriotism, but this is just sheer idiocy. The tea party IS the fanatic wing of the Republican party with a new name. They are funded by the usuals suspects, they are fluffed by the usual suspects, the use the same right-wing rhetoric and give lip-service to the same issues (but don’t mean it), they are running in Republican primaries, their leadership are elected Republicans or “former” Republican operatives. For christ sake, the Heather Chandler of the Tea Party movement is Sarah Palin, the last Republican VP nominee.
Claiming the tea party is taking over the Republican party is like claiming Xe took over Blackwater or that KFC took over Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Bob L
Short of outright civil war how does the GOP become “less willing”? Unlike some people I doubt there will be a civil war since 99% of the Right is on the dole one way or another. So were else do they have to go?
MattF
It’s marketing, and it seems to work. “Tea party” sounds a lot better than “elderly, paranoid, white Southern male.”
El Tiburon
My turn.
Claiming the tea party is taking over the Republican party is like claiming the Clap took over Gonorrhea.
Tell me again how Democrats are losing to these batshit-insane teatards again?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Well, yes, but… it’s been my impression that among the people on the ground (not the people with the money) there are a lot of people who might not have bothered to get involved in any way before, because they were too busy stocking their bunkers and listening for helicopters.
I think that it’s like saying the managers of a few Popeyes joined KFC and THEN they took over Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you see what I mean.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
The Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stoned lays it all out.
Select money quotes:
There ain’t nobody better than Taibbi.
Comrade Dread
But, but, but every tea party patriot I’ve spoken to has told me that they were, in fact, not the jackholes who called me a traitor for railing against Bush, but were right there with me in spirit.
Kryptik
@El Tiburon:
It’s like saying that Spineless Wimps took over the Democratic Party!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@El Tiburon:
Because we’re Democrats. Yunno, the party that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. The party that’s still waaay too beholden to Wall Street and the Corporate Oligarchs. The party that forgot Dean’s 50 State Statergery the instant he stepped down as DNC head. Etc and also.
That being said, we haven’t lost yet.
kindness
OMG, KFC took over Kentucky Fried Chicken?!?
Must be some pinko-commie-fascist-liberals who I can blame for it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Comrade Dread:
There’s a term for people like that:
Lying Sacks O’ Shit.
They’ll also tell you they’re not racist. And that they’ll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.
fasteddie9318
@Bob L:
At least two-thirds of them are too stupid to know that they’re on the dole, so I think the potential for a very brief civil war (“WTF, I secede and suddenly the Medicare check stops coming for some reason?”) is still there.
stuckinred
@kindness: And the Y took over the YMCA!
Kryptik
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Carlin had three standards of crap spewing, if you remember: Fucking Stupid, Full’a Shit, and Fucking Nuts. Just like Dan Quayle, the Teabaggers are all three.
JCT
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
But not *that* part of Brooklyn (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
RSR
The tea party is to the GOP what Xfinity is to Comcast: branding.
Dennis SGMM
@Bob L:
Heh! I doubt there’s been this much animosity in the Senate since the 1850’s. I would not be surprised to see one of the conservative firebrands stride into the Senate and use a cane to beat the hell out of Harry Reid a la Sumner/Brooks in 1856.
stuckinred
What I like best about the Taibbi piece is how “offended” these motherfuckers get at any implication that they are racist.
Dennis SGMM
@Bob L:
The difference is that the ‘baggers all know that they deserve to be on the dole – unlike all those welfare sponges and the layabout unemployed.
eemom
actually I think Taco Bell owns KFC. Or maybe they’re both owned by 7-11.
Stooleo
The tea party is to the GOP, is what a rusty trombone is to a dirty sanchez.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@stuckinred:
Me thinketh they doth protest too loudly.
I know a lot of these fucks. Get them in private quarters, ply them with a case of an American Light beer and kick back to watch the “humor” start. They use words and phrases that they know would get them branded as, yunno, bigots, but never have the courage to utter them in public.
Nick
@El Tiburon:
batshit-insane voters
Violet
This is a big problem.
I wonder if a rally for a better quality media would get covered by the media we’ve got. Maybe we’ve got the one we deserve, but I want a much stronger, much more active media. I want them to do the jobs they should be doing, not just gin up non-stories for their corporate masters.
FlipYrWhig
Remember how there were all these clips of dumb cracker-ass people at McCain rallies in 2008? Why is the media pretending that the Tea Party is something other than that?
Kryptik
@Dennis SGMM:
And then they’ll either demand an apology from Reid on the floor of the house via satellite, or sue him for damages to the cane.
And the media will then dutifully scold Reid for being so hard headed and destroying senatorial property.
FlipYrWhig
@stuckinred:
I knew a guy in high school who insisted that he wasn’t racist, he just hated stupid people, and most black people were stupid. I think Tea Party logic works along the same lines.
Kryptik
@FlipYrWhig:
Tea Party logic nothin’. That’s GOP standard talking point #1. Look at the attitudes toward Muslims, and the poor, and anyone else reasonably ‘unsavory’. “It’s not that we hate Muslims, it’s that we hate terrorists, and most Muslims are terrorists!” “It’s not that we hate the poor, we just hate the lazy, and most poor people are lazy, you just HAVE to admit!”
Dennis SGMM
@Kryptik:
The question is, would more than six Dem Senators sign on to the demand?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
There really is nothing new about this. It’s classic Atwater/Rove/Nixonian Southern Strategy/racist politics only a bit more shrill and with different dog whistles.
stuckinred
@FlipYrWhig: Yea nd they love the “there are n*ggers and there are black people” bullshit.
Kryptik
@Dennis SGMM:
I’m not sure, I know at least three would be surefire. Conrad, Lincoln, and Ben Nelson for sure.
@stuckinred:
Without any of the irony of Chris Rock’s point in the bit: black people need to stop living up to the worst stereotypes of black people.
Instead, the takeaway with the ‘baggers and such instead leans toward ‘There are ‘good’ black folk, and then there’s the rest’.
wengler
No no no, the Tea Party is a big tent party. It stretches all the way from staunch rightwing Republicans to Paulites to the Constitution Party fringe all the way to the Birchers.
As a segment of the population this ‘diverse’ group is extremely small. As a percentage of the population in an election they are…still quite small. The only way they make some sort of electoral majority is if a) moderates aren’t scared away and vote for crazy people just to send Obama and Democrats a message or b) voter turnout is historically low.
Of course this is also the first election after Citizens United so perhaps all those commercials will get stuck in the heads of low information voters and the corporate cranks will gain even more power.
Comrade Dread
@Dennis SGMM: Exactly. They have an image of themselves as the hard working blue collar American who played by the rules and is now either down on their luck or taking the money they put into the system back out (though they often draw far more than they put in), while they view the rest of the safety net users as illegal immigrants and lazy (mostly minority) scum who are taking advantage of the system and fleecing good folks like them.
Jewish Steel
So, wait. Does that mean almost 30% of Republicans don’t approve of the TP?
Is that a lot? Is that just the c. 25% of any group that hasn’t heard of or understand much of anything?
Annie
What the media hasn’t questioned enough is how all these concerned citizens, who supposedly advocate for limited government and individual responsibility have the resources to travel to all of these rallies — i.e., corporate sponsorship and government entitlements. There is little that is grassroots about the tea partiers.
Tsulagi
Yeah, but it’s hard out there for a tard.
Not long ago their rallying cry was “Family Values!” But we all saw the depth and breadth of those convictions. Right, C-Street boyz, Diaper Dave, Soulmate Hunter and all the rest of you guiding lights?
So they swapped out Family Values. Reinvented themselves they did behind the teabagger flag. Now the cry and call to arms is “Constitution!” With the cafeteria Christians bringing all the same depth and breadth. Never doubt the keen intellect of the sandbox analyzers nor their resolve. They may not be able to spell, but damn they got spittle.
Seanly
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Read that article online. Lots of money shots in it.
A couple of years ago I didn’t like Matt Tiabbi pieces as they seemed to be a slightly liberal version of Broder/Brooks “a pox on both houses” style stories. Wonder what happened to make him see the GOP is full of shit all the time.
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade Dread:
This.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Seanly:
8 years of massive Republican cockups and gross hypocrisy on every policy issue facing the country?
I’m just guessing.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
What we’re discussing is deja vu all over again:
https://balloon-juice.com/2008/10/17/the-new-definition-of-the-republican-party/
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This simply reiterates our ranting about how the Corporate Media Wankers won’t report on the Teatards for what they really are: modern, mainstream Republicans.
pattonbt
Tea Partiers are former cheerleading Republicans who want to guilt/responsibility free absolve themselves from the disaster that is the Republican party by saying they aren’t Republicans. It’s self brand management to salve their soul so they don’t have to actually reflect on their beliefs and support for people and policies that were total failures.
“I didnt leave the Republican Party, it left me!!!! See, Im still Virtuous and Awesome!!!!”
Bob L
@Dennis SGMM:
To be fair the day before he was attacked Sumner had been mocking Senator Butler for having a stroke and deserved a beating, Since I don’t see Reid launching into personal attacks on the handicapped that would be bold new territory for US politics but you are right, you can’t put it passed them. This future teabagger assailant will probably claim Ried was talking in code or something off the wingnut event horizon.
So I guess low level violence is the future.
someguy
This lines up nicely with the article in The Voice about how the typical white mind in America has become rotten and fetid with racism – something the RNC is no doubt aware of and preying upon.
bemused
I don’t think all of media is too dumb to figure this out. For most in msm, their jobs/paychecks go hand in hand with pushing idiotic, questionable and false memes.
Anoniminous
@Comrade Dread:
That’s not terribly wrong.
They WERE blue collar workers who played by the rules and now they’re being screwed.
What they can’t get through their little minds is the people who changed the rule book and doing the screwing are the same people funding the Tea Bagger Movement: Fox News, plutocrats, & etc.
HyperIon
John Cole wrote:
Umm…department of redundancy department.
give lip-service to = don’t mean it
Bender
The World According to Ball-Juicers:
Voters in 2004: Crazy torture-mongers!
Voters in 2008: Brilliant thinkers!
Voters in 2010: Ignorant, insane racists!
At least you guys aren’t delusional.
jlw
You know who these guys are? They are the people — quite literally — who voted for Nixon in 1972.
Davis X. Machina
Any day now these peasants will up pitchforks and torches and march — on their own hovels, still baffled by their inability to hang themselves from the nearest lamp posts.
Has there ever been a group-achievement Darwin Award?
Brachiator
But, but, it’s such a comforting mythology to pretend that the tea party movement represents a spontaneous, grassroots response to big government.
Nick
@Violet: BTW, an example of a media fail.
On Selden, on Long Island, a mosque that has been there for 30 years is planning on tearing down their existing building and building a new mosque. Miss Agnes Ross, who lives across the street, tells our local ABC affilliate “I’m concerned that they’re not going to fix the parking problem” as parking on Fridays spills over into the street right now. They are building a bigger parking lot, which pleases Richard Roberts, who tells ABC “I’m glad they’re building a bigger lot”
FOX, CBS and NBC gets the story, and the story goes from “Local residents concerned new mosque won’t solve parking problems” to a “Local residents concerned about new mosque” and takes Ross’ “I’m concerned” as a show of opposition to the mosque and Roberts’ “I’m glad” as a show of support. Community divided!
ABC, my former employer, not to be outdone, redid their story for the 11 pm news, where the parking issue was eliminated from the story and instead they interviewed some man who called all Muslims terrorists and then the Imam whom they asked “Do you think this opposition has anything to do with the insistence on a mosque at Ground Zero?”
Imam was shocked to hear there was any community opposition at all, since there wasn’t any until the media showed up.
Brachiator
@Davis X. Machina:
I believe it is the Full Darwin with Lemmings Cluster.
Just Some Fuckhead
Or “clown takes over John Wayne Gacy”.
geg6
@Bob L:
Um, dude? You need to read a little history.
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm
Don’t see anything in there about making fun of his stroke.
mclaren
Brilliant. Perfect.
brantl
71% of 25% is still jackshit. That’s the punchline.