Sorry Conservatives, the Tea Parties Are Anything But Mainstream

via AlterNet:



Posted by stevebenen at 11:06 am
April 5, 2010

Sorry Conservatives, the Tea Parties Are Anything But Mainstream
This post originally appeared on Washington Monthly.


One of the day’s biggest stories among conservative bloggers is some new survey data that suggests the right-wing Tea Party “movement” is in line with the new American “mainstream.” There’s ample reason for skepticism about this. Indeed, the closer one looks at the data, the more it seems Andrew Malcolm and other reflexive partisans are pushing a bogus spin.

There are actually two polls getting attention today. The first is from the Winston Group, a Republican firm, which published a survey that generated this write-up from The Hill.



At first blush, reading that “four in 10″ Teabaggers are Dems or Independents makes it sound as if the unhinged, misguided movement has broad support. It doesn’t. Even if we accept a Republican firm’s results at face value, the Tea Party is dominated by Republicans and Republican-friendly independents (remember, thinking on Indys as a coherent, self-contained group is completely wrong).

If an analysis is going to lump Tea Party-friendly Independents with one of the major parties, it makes far more sense to say 85% of movement members are Republicans or Independents.

While about a third of the nation at large approves of the Republican Party, with the Tea Party crowd, GOP approval is a whopping 71%. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/05/sorry-conservatives-the-tea-parties-are-anything-but-mainstream/