Republicans By Any Other Name
by digby
Activists in the Tea Party movement tend to be male, rural, upscale, and overwhelmingly conservative, according to a new national poll. According to the survey, roughly 11 percent of all Americans say they have actively supported the Tea Party movement, either by donating money, attending a rally, or taking some other active step to support the movement. Of this core group of Tea Party activists, 6 of 10 are male and half live in rural areas. Nearly three-quarters of Tea Party activists attended college, compared to 54 percent of all Americans, and more than 3 in 4 call themselves conservatives.[…]
“Keep in mind that this is a pretty small sample of Tea Party activists,” Holland said. “But even taking that into account, the demographic gaps that the poll finds between those activists and the general public on gender, education, income, ideology, and voting behavior appear to be significant differences.” The poll indicates that about 24 percent of the public generally favors the Tea Party movement but has not taken any actions such as donating money or attending a rally. Adding in the 11 percent who say they are active, a total of 35 percent could be described as Tea Party supporters. That larger group is also predominantly male, higher-income, and conservative.
And here I thought they represented the great majority cross section of salt ‘o the earth Independent Real Americans who have reluctantly just come to realize that liberalism doesn’t work and it’s actually the same people who worshipped Bush to the bitter end and now insist they never supported anything he did. Imagine my surprise.
This has always just been common sense. Unfortunately, the press has portrayed these people as representatives of mainstream American thought, just as they did during the Bush years. (They are mostly white, middle aged, male conservatives, so naturally they are, at the very least, the most important Americans.) And as Dave Neiwert has painstakingly documented, the result is that their ever more hysterical, fringe ideas are granted mainstream status. But they are nothing new. They are just the same old right wing, which was embarrassed by Bush’s unpopularity and appalled by the illegitimate Obama (all Democratic presidents are, by definition, illegitimate) and the coalition that elected him. They are putting on funny hats and gathering openly with their looniest fringe, but there’s nothing unique about them. They are FOX News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh Republicans, bought and paid for by all the usual suspects, even if they don’t know it.
This story suggests that the Republicans are worried that the tea partiers are worrying the Republicans because they may form a third party — and their lips to God’s ears on that one. Unfortunately, I suspect they will all fall in line soon enough. It won’t take much for the GOP to gain their trust. All they have to do is promise to be as wingnutty as possible and with this rump party, that’s not any kind of hardship. As long as unemployment stays at 10%, and the media remains as fickle and stupid as usual, they have an excellent chance to sell their special brand of Randian fascism and get away with it, and they know it.
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