Courtesy of HuffPo:
Support for the tea party is nearly as low as it's been since the movement's creation, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Twenty-two percent of those polled consider themselves supporters of the tea party, while 27 percent of respondents say they oppose the movement. The remaining 51 percent say they're neither, or don't have an opinion. Those who say they "strongly oppose" the tea party also outnumber those who "strongly support" it, 17 percent to 11 percent.
Overall support is down 10 points from the 32 percent who supported the tea party in the days after the 2010 midterm election, and nearly tied with the record low support for the movement in late 2011, as measured by Gallup.
While Republicans continue to have the closest ties to the tea party, their level of support is far lower than it was in the movement's heyday. Thirty-eight percent of Republicans support the tea party, while 7 percent of them oppose it and a majority 55 percent is ambivalent. In November 2010, 65 percent of Republicans identified with the Tea Party.
Perhaps just as interesting is that the Teabaggers have the same issues with the Republicans as they have with them:
On the flip side, tea party members are less than unanimously pleased with the GOP; while 55 percent of members view the Republican Party favorably, 43 percent of them view it unfavorably.
"U.S. support for the Tea Party is at a low ebb at a time when key issues of concern for the movement -- funding for the Affordable Care Act and raising the U.S. debt ceiling -- are focal points in Washington, with Tea Party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz prominently fighting both policies," Gallup senior editor Lydia Saad wrote. "The discomfort he has created in the Republican caucus is merely emblematic of the ambivalence national Republicans feel toward the movement. Although few Republicans outright oppose the Tea Party, far more are neutral toward it than support it."
Sarah Palin recently claimed that Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and other Tea Party politicians have essentially become a third party. This is something that I have been hesitantly predicting for a few years now, but have always maintained that it would be an extremely dangerous and politically costly endeavor for the Republicans if it were to occur.
With the polling numbers so low it would seem that it is less likely than before, but so long as the Koch brothers and the Heritage Foundation keeping sending it money it will not go away completely. And who knows it just might prove impossible for the GOP to completely isolate them before their tentacles spread so far into the party that attempts to kill it may cost the life of its host as well.
Sounds like good news for the liberals.
Sarah Palin = Teabagger which is the kiss of death! Especially so now that the Cuban/Canadian is on board. They are a group of nasty people that is for sure. Dividers, liars, not Christian acting, etc.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt they are splitting the Republican party - a friggin' mess to say the least, but good for the Democratic party!
As Obama’s presidency winds down, the racists will wander off to find other diversions or die. They won’t get the same head of steam up against Hillary because she’s white, and the memory of Margaret Thatcher.
ReplyDeleteI totally disagree. They are already attacking Hillary, Bill, Chelsea, bringing up Monica. One radio jerk even decided to call the ACA ClintonCAre, just so they recall who tried to fix this in 1993. They are looking past Obama already and preparing to pull out all the stops for Hillary. They weren't ncie to her last time, and will be evil this time.
DeleteI agree with Sally. Racism/homophobia/hatred and evil will never go away completely, it's like ignorance (or Sarah Palin for that matter), Sarah's already got her claws out for Hillary, and voices it as a deflection from her recent fawning over Cruz.
Deletehttp://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/23/sarah-palin-hillary-clinton-ill-suited-for-president/
"Tea Baggers have an issue with Republicans too"
ReplyDeleteWell of course they do. Here you have a group of undereducated, self-absorbed, prescription drug addled, fear mongered, racist conspiracy theorists with a huge persecution complex who don't believe in "government". And the Koch's think they can control them?
I'd be having so much more fun with this if I wasn't so darn afraid that they'll blow us up with them.
My take on this is - this Tea Party was an intensifying thrilling thing in it's beginning, 2008. It gave the McCain campaign and the GOP a new energy. People in this group were used.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason this TP energy has been fizzing out is that it hitched it's wagon on the traditional GOP, believing that the old guard would give them a voice and become elected, they catered to their emotional, unstable, sometimes racist demands, thinking they'd be able get rid of them once elected.
But the Tea Party has been a thorn in their flesh, rising it's ugly little head up every once in a while, like a whack-a-mole.
It seems too, that the Tea-Party placed senators in 2010 have now rebranded themselves into a new improved libertarian, to shake off the old 'teaparty crazy; now the remnant teaparty kooks have found themselves without a leader and an anchor.
In fact, I think there is a 4th party. It's the original tea-partiers who are finding themselves thrown overboard without a raft or paddle. The Kochs now have set their eyes on Rand Paul. Ted and the gang will be no longer be
needed and may in very short order be joining the unemployment lines.
Off topic but you did mention Palin... Today NPR had a segment, "Eulogy for the Blackberry." The Palin curse strikes again. I just hope it works more quickly on Cruz.
ReplyDeleteGood news so far! Best of all a team like Cruz and Palin. Why does she hate Ronald Reagan so much? She has totally blown off his warnings yet is unable to fess up. Come on Palin fess up!
ReplyDeleteThat and that he raised the debt ceiling 18 times. I bet the baggers don't know that bit of history.
Deletehttp://tinyurl.com/3g57vsb
Can't help but laugh at the way these fringe conservatives keep harping on 'what would Reagan do'? They're really building him up now as some golden calf idol. May he rest in peace, there were many good qualities about the man, but he was a man who erred too.
ReplyDeleteThe tea-party so desperately wants a flesh and blood leader. They act like they're the Egyptian Jews who need a Moses to lead them out of Egypt and slavery to their new promised land. They want a Moses/Reagan. But, they aren't oppressed and have much to be thankful for but prefer to brand themselves as oppressed, pining their old glory days, when life was so good. Couch-sitting, clutching their remotes, they wait and pray and hope and believe they'll live through a new reicht with an all-white leader. They hitch their wagon on a white-skinned fantasy savior.
MArtin Bashir asked some GOP 'spokesman' (where is Reince hiding by the way?) about a leader yesterday, and the guy admitted that they have no one. It would be funny if the party had enough sane people in Congress to work for the people, but they are AWOL. What are they so afraid of? What is 20% going to do to them anyway? Wouldn't it be better to act like adults, tick off the Tea freaks, and maybe pick up some independents who hate both parties but will vote for people who put people first? Right.
DeleteI hope Reagan is rotting in hell for the incalculable and permanent harm he did to this country.
DeleteNow why wouldn't any one want to align themselves with a stupid old redneck bitch with tea bags dangling from her hat?Wonders never cease.
ReplyDeleteThe Senate voted to move forward with funding 79-19. Take THAT, Cruz and Esther!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"Sounds like good news for the liberals." ONLY if we get out the vote next year. ONLY THEN.
Extinction can't happen sooner to these shitbags for me.
ReplyDeleteThink of all the things that happened in Congress BEFORE the 2010 midterms elections and the rise of the TEA Party. Love or hate what happened, there is simply no denying that things, oftentimes BIG things, got done.
ReplyDeleteLily Ledbetter-equal pay for women. First bill passed by Congress in 2009.
Stimulus-biggest in US history.
Auto Industry Bailout-saved millions of jobs.
Dodd Frank -most significant financial services regulation since 1930s.
Obamacare-biggest change to health care since Medicare/Medicaid.
Compare that to what's happened since the 2010 midterms.
Within a week of taking back the House, Republicans threatened to shut down the government unless President Obama extended the Bush era tax cuts for two years. That was the first of THREE threatened shutdowns in the first nine months after the 2010 midterms. Plus another couple since then, with two more on the horizon if/when we deal with the current funding issue.
Since 2010 there have been no "jobs, jobs, jobs" bills from Congress (none that have been scored by ANY credible group/person/agency as creating ANY jobs). They have done NOTHING but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Well, and tell lies about Obamacare.
At this point, Republicans have gone beyond obstructing, and now they are clearly in the realm of destructing. Which is exactly what the TEA Party wants. In order to prove that government is "broken", they came to Washington to break it. Talk about a "self-fulfilling prophecy".....
End Days for the GOP
ReplyDeleteAfter years of sabotaging government and getting away with it, the GOP has finally gone too far. America knows it, and so does the party itself.
...The gig may be about up. The odds are good that by the morning of October 18, one of two (correct) perceptions will be broadly held by the American public: one, that the Republican Party has collapsed into all-out ideological civil war; two, that the Republicans are a party not merely of obstructionists but destructionists, in ways that will be so evident that even those independents devoted to the idea that both sides are to blame will run up the white flag. All the Republicans’ madness of the last five years is finally going to catch up with them.
If I’m right, it will happen because of three events that the American people could simply not witness without at long last reaching some obvious conclusions. The first was Ted Cruz’s talk-athon. So many adjectives can be attached to it that I hardly know where to start, but none of them are good: self-aggrandizing, arrogant, pompous, windy, irrelevant. And don’t forget phony, since he worked the whole thing out with Harry Reid in advance.
But the real impact of Cruz’s stunt is this. He creates one more purity test, one more hoop of fire for conservatives to demand Republicans walk through. I’m sure you’ve noticed how these have popped up every so often, and that senators who were always conservative but used to be kind of sensible at the end the day would suddenly have to adopt these new hard-line positions...
...Well, Cruz has now made himself the “death panel” of 2013, but there’s a difference. Republicans embraced death-panel rhetoric because there was no cost to not doing so. But a lot of them just hate Cruz. They won’t embrace him, and he is going to divide the party and the conservative movement into two increasingly alienated factions. It’ll be hard for them to keep the broader public from noticing this...
...You can only set so many houses on fire before people finally figure out that this isn’t happening by accident and you must be an arsonist. The GOP is now flirting with that moment. It can’t come soon enough....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/27/end-days-for-the-gop.html
That poor woman with the teabags hanging from her hat has become an icon signifying the spirit of the Tea Party--misguided, foolish, and proud of it.
ReplyDeleteYou mean those are tea bags? I thought they were tampons! That would match their intelligence level!
ReplyDelete(Snark!)
The tea party and the GOP deserve each other. It may have been novel and brought in big bucks early on, thanks in part to the "hottest governor from the coldest state" and the "great job they did" (often heard when there's nothing left to say, like Sarah's makeover and introduction). She opened her mouth and it's been downhill ever since.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the tea party's over, the GOP is in the dumps, and like every retro virus, we'll always have Sarah and Cockroaches.
The good news is they scurry away when the lights go on.