What, they’re not all a bunch of fanatical right wingers? There are even some Dems unhappy with Obama’s insane spending spree, and grotesque expansion of government? Say it ain’t so!
The Hill reports:
Four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents, according to a new national survey.
The findings provide one of the most detailed portraits to date of the grassroots movement that started last year.
The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.
Liberal tea partiers? That sounds like an oxymoron – unless we’re talking about “classical liberalism”, in which case, maybe they should update their terminology to the 21st century to avoid confusion.
UPDATE:
Ed Morrissey took a close look at the demographics of the tea party movement, according to this poll:
Is the Tea Party as racist as the media and leading Democrats have portrayed? Gallup’s demos of the Tea Party look very close to that of the overall American demos on ethnicity. Whites make up 79% of the Tea Party and 75% of the population; blacks, 6% of the Tea Party and 11% of the population; and “other” in the Tea Party exactly matches the general population at 15%.
The demographic similarities don’t stop there. The educational background of Tea Party followers almost exactly matches that of the general population. Among age demos, the differences between the two are no more than two points for any of the four categories used by Gallup. The same is true of employment profiles, although ironically Tea Party followers tend slightly more to be employed full-time than not. Income demographics differ a little more, but not by much. Low-income earners (less than $30K) make up 19% of the Tea Party, as compared to 25% of the general population, and those making more than $50K are 55% of the Tea Party rather than the 50% of the general population, but that’s not much of a difference.
This is exactly why, as Morrissey notes, the MSM is bleeding viewers and readers. Mainstream Americans are sick of seeing their values, and a movement they sympathize with, trashed, day in and day out.
See also:
Rasmussen: Tea Party 48% Obama 44%
Big Government: Throwing Stones, The Left’s Hypocrisy Problem
Many a partisan and pundit-provocateur has spent the last year trying to convince us that the tea parties consist of violent extremists. The multi-front attack has come from the media, Hollywood, and the current White House.
At the genesis of the movement, David Axelrod couched criticism of the Obama agenda as “unhealthy” on national television. Last April, the infamous “right-wing extremism” report released the week before the tax day tea parties by the Department of Homeland Security. The report referenced “disgruntled veterans” and lumped those that believed in states’ rights in with white supremacists and militia members. It was an embarrassment to the Department of Homeland Security and the administration. Public apologies to veterans and regrets regarding the extremely broad language were issued.
Continue reading at Big Government…
Hot Air: House Democrat: All that’s missing from the tea party are the robes and hoods
Da Techguy’s Blog: Yeah insult people’s neighbors, that’ll work.
John at Powerline weighs in:
The key datum, as usual, is that independents prefer the Tea Party over Obama by 50-38 percent.
It is starting to appear that the Democrats would have been better off to engage the Tea Partiers’ ideas, rather than merely slandering them. But old habits die hard.
Lefties can’t engage in ideas because they know that their own ideas are wildly unpopular with mainstream Americans. That’s why time and time again they rely on smears and name-calling.
Hat tip: Gateway Pundit
There’s Been A Great Disturbance In The Narrative
