This And That In The News – Tea Party

This And That In The News – Tea Party

"This And That In The News" is about articles in the news that have caught my eye and I want to comment about. There are three articles that caught my attention today. Today it was two articles about the Tea Party,

Tea Partiers Care More About Godlier Government Than Smaller Government
New York Magazine
By: Dan Amira
8/17/11

In 2006, long before costume shops first began selling tri-corner hats to early adopters of the tea party movement, professors David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam "interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans" about their "political attitudes." By re-interviewing many of the same people this summer, they were able to determine what type of person eventually became a tea partier. Some of what they found is about as shocking as an episode of Full House: Current tea-party supporters were likely to have been "highly partisan Republicans," and "even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president."[…]

Shocking? No, really if you read the CBS/New York Times poll back in April of 2010…

18% of Americans identify as Tea Party supporters of those…

• 89% are White
• 58% live in the Midwest or the South
• 75% are 45 years old or older
• 73% are Conservatives
• 39% are Evangelicals
• 76% make over $50,000
• 54% are Republicans
• 63% say they get the majority of their political and current events news on television from the Fox News Channel
• 84% say the views of the Tea Party movement reflect the views of most Americans (However, Americans overall disagree: Just 25 percent say the Tea Party movement reflects their beliefs, while 36 percent say it does not)
• 30% say they believe Mr. Obama was born in another country
• 92% say that President Obama's policies are moving the country toward socialism (Compared to 52% of American)
• 93% say the economy as at least somewhat bad, and 42% say it is getting worse.
• 82% say they see illegal immigration as a serious problem
• 66% say they doubt the impact of global warming
• 40% say they oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions

The New York Magazine article had a link to another article in the New York Times

Crashing the Tea Party
New York Times
By DAVID E. CAMPBELL and ROBERT D. PUTNAM
Published: August 16, 2011

GIVEN how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics.

But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think.
[…]
Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.
[…]
More important, they [Tea Partiers] were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

This inclination among the Tea Party faithful to mix religion and politics explains their support for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Their appeal to Tea Partiers lies less in what they say about the budget or taxes, and more in their overt use of religious language and imagery, including Mrs. Bachmann’s lengthy prayers at campaign stops and Mr. Perry’s prayer rally in Houston.

Do you remember the first bill the Republicans introduced this year in the House? It was an anti-abortion bill that attempted to redefine rape to only allow forcible rape to be defined as rape. Beside blocking the debit limit increase, the majority of bills introduced by the House Republicans dealt with social issues, abortion, same sex marriage, to cut Planned Parenthood from the Federal Budget, cuts to Head Start and WIC, and cuts to Meals on Wheels. But nothing to create jobs.

All the leading Republican candidates have signed a marriage pledge to “defend” marriage, included in that pledge is a promise to set up a McCarthyism type presidential commission to “…investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters,” and to have a litmus test for federal judges, “Appoint judges and an attorney general who will respect the original meaning of the Constitution”. Hmm, the last time I looked, there was nothing in the Constitution about marriage, only an amendment that required the government to treat everyone equally.