Quit calling the Tea Party Populist!!!

A new poll by Democracy Corps, state what was been long believed by progressives regarding the TEA Party. I have Copied what I think is the most pressing issues and ask my readers to pass this Poll along to other Democrats as talking points! In this combined database of over 2,600 interviews, 25 percent identify themselves as “strong” supporters of the Tea Party movement.


The Tea Party: Popular accounts describe it as a populist revolt against elites. Richard Viguerie at a tax day rally said, “The tea parties are an unfettered new force of the middle class tapping into the anger [at] most major American institutions such as Wall Street, education, Hollywood, the media, big labor.”  And Matt Bai in The New York Times writes, “the only potent grass-roots movement to emerge from this moment of dissatisfaction with America’s economic elite exists … in the form of the so-called Tea Party rebellions that are injecting new energy into the Republican cause.”
While many of the Tea Party supporters are also frustrated with the Republican Party of TARP bailouts, that does not alter the character of the movement:

• 86 percent of Tea Party supporters and activists identify with or lean to the Republican Party.
• 79 percent identify as conservatives.
• They are among the most pro-big business segments of the electorate: 54 percent rate it warmly and 20 percent coolly.
• The Tea Party movement is not particularly blue collar.  Tea Party supporters are slightly less likely to be college-graduates than the likely electorate (41 percent, versus 45 percent), and the activists more so (48 percent).  And 85 percent of the supporters are white.
• Only 5 percent report having voted for Obama in 2008.

With Tea Party supporters comprising one in four (25 percent) likely voters and one in ten (10 percent) active as donors or attending rallies, what they think matters:

• They are fired up – 94 percent of the supporters say they are almost certain to vote.
• They share a great disdain for President Obama, with over 92 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance, and 89 percent strongly. Only 6 percent think Obama ‘shares their values.’
• They share a coherent, anti-government, conservative ideology that wants small government, little spending and returning the country to the Constitution.
• They are united against “Obama’s Socialist Agenda” – that puts the country gravely at risk.
• They deeply identify with Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the NRA – which share their worldview – re-enforced by the echo-chamber of Fox News, their main source of news. 
• They are gaining energy from the prospect that they can stop Obama in this year’s election, save the party from fake conservatives and use the Republican Party to save the Constitution. 

The Tea Party supporters are a blessing for the Republican Party in this off-year challenge to the Democrats, but in important ways, they have become the Republican Party.  Almost half of self-identified Republicans (47 percent) are strong Tea Party supporters who have already played an outside role in punishing Republican moderates and producing a unified, polarizing, and unpopular national Republican Party.  The Tea Party is not very popular outside the Republican Party and Republican-leaning independents, and Beck and Palin even less so.
And in a presidential year, strong Tea Party supporters are only 21 percent of the larger electorate.
Obama’s Socialist Agenda
Tea Party activists and supporters see Obama as the defining and motivating threat to the country and its well-being, typified by his socialist agenda. Among supporters, 90 percent say the socialist label describes Obama well and 68 percent say it describes him very well. Obama fares no better on the other attributes tested: nine-in-10 think he is too liberal (93 percent) and a big spender (90 percent).
The driving force behind their negativity toward Obama is the belief that his actions and goals are un-American.  Throughout the focus groups, people repeatedly invoked “Obama’s Socialist Agenda” – with the occasional communism comment thrown in.  Participants said it is this socialist agenda – which underlies all of Obama’s policies seeking to make citizens more dependent on the state – that has put people over the edge and launched a movement that has been percolating for a long time.

The subject that may have drawn the most attention to the Tea Party movement was their vocal opposition to health care reform – and that may be contributing to the perception of hostility more broadly in the electorate.  The new health care law was a keystone for their opposition to government intrusion into their lives.  Just 3 percent give it a warm rating.   But it is worth noting that among non-Tea Party supporters, a respectable 48 percent give the new health care law a warm rating.

Tea Party supporters give very low ratings to the mainstream media – networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC.  Only 7 percent give the media a warm rating – confirming the intense distrust of the media in the focus groups. They are seen as a cheerleader for President Obama, and have been since the beginning of the campaign.  This distrust extends to network news – ABC, CBS, and NBC are all seen as biased – and CNN referred to as “the Communist News Network.”

In Beck We Trust
Glenn Beck is the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters of the people we tested. He scores an extraordinarily high 75 percent warm rating, 57 percent very warm.
This affinity for Beck came through very clearly in the focus groups. The only news source that participants said they could trust was Fox.  Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity were cited as people who “are not afraid to tell it like it is” and support their arguments with solid facts.  Beck was undoubtedly the hero in these groups.  Participants consider him an “educator” (in contrast to the popular Rush Limbaugh who is an “entertainer”) who teaches people history and puts himself at risk because he exposes the truth.  In the words of a woman in Ft. Lauderdale, “I would trust my life in his hands.”

Economic Uncertainty ?
When asked what they (Tea Partiers) thought of the country’s economic situation or their own personal situation, focus group members would repeatedly revert back to talking about how bad Obama is and that the government needs to get out of our lives.  Any discussion of jobs or recovery turned to “all the new jobs are government and census jobs which don’t do anything for our economy.”
These groups suggest that the Tea Party movement is not fueled by the economic situation in the country.  Yes, there were a lot of economic concerns among the non-college educated women, but for the other three groups this was just not the issue.  In the open-ended discussion at the beginning of the groups, they rarely brought up the economy unprompted.  And when asked what they thought of the country’s economic situation or their own personal situation, they would not engage

Pretty foreboding Stuff about parts of our Population Folks. Time for some Neighbor to Neighbor re-education on our part.

This memo from Democracy Corps is based on focus groups and polls conducted in April, May and June by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Citizen Opinion. All surveys were based on telephone interviews with likely voters, conducted on the following dates: April 17-20, 2010 among 872 likely voters, May 15-18, 2010 among 875 likely voters and June 19-22, 2010 among 867 likely voters. The margin of error for the combined 652 strong supporters is 4 percentage points, for the 243 activists it is 6.5 percentage points.