Narrative, Interrupted
By Mitch Berg
The Tea Party are extremists that the American people refudiate.
Right?
Well, not so fast (emphasis added):
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% of Likely U.S. Voters think the president’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country. But just as many (42%) say their views come closest to those of the average Tea Party member instead. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This marks a small setback for the Tea Party from April 2010 when 48% felt closest to the average Tea Party member, while 44% said they had more in common with the president
On the other hand, it’s right after the full-fledged media narrative-attack over the “shutdown”.
Thirty-four percent (34%) now believe their personal views are closest to those of the average member of Congress when it comes to the major issues of the day. But slightly more (36%) say their views are closest to those of the average member of the Tea Party. A sizable 30%, however, are not sure.
Opposition by Tea Party Republicans to the president’s national health care law has been blamed for the recent government shutdown, and just 30% of voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. That’s back to the level seen in January and down from a high of 44% in May after it was disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Many of the “unfavorables” are likely never voting conservative under any circumstances.
The GOP has to present an alternative to the Democrats.
October 30th, 2013 at 12:25 pm
Did the poll measure how someone’s beliefs agree with what an average Tea Party member actually believes, or what the respondent thinks the Tea Party believes?
October 30th, 2013 at 12:50 pm
One of my Facebook friends today actually posted this:
I re-watched The Killing Fields last night and reflected, not for the first time, on the striking similarities between the Khmer Rouge and the Tea Party. If Sarah Palin could drive all the city-dwellers into the countryside, murder all the intellectuals, and dump the bodies in bomb craters, she’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s kind of like their domestic spending plan. “Angka will provide!” Year Zero indeed.
I mean, sure, it’s hyperbole (I hope), but the Tea Party has been one of the most peaceful grassroots movements to organize in decades. Compare it to, say, the Occupy Movement with its rapes, thefts and general vagrancy, and you start to wonder just what realm of reality people like this inhabit.
October 30th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Yoss: it is my opnion that this is a direct result of the leftist/Marxist takeover of the public education system in the last 50-60 years. That’s their reality. Propaganda and indoctrination trumps rational thought and truth. The previously indoctrinated have been indoctrinating the young mushy skulls for a couple generations now.
October 30th, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Despite the fact that JFK was assassinated by a self-professed communist who had defected to the Soviet Union, there are millions of Americans who believe that Kennedy was killed by a cabal of “right-wing extremists”.
October 30th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Living in a state completely controlled by the Tea Party, I can tell you that you don’t wanna be here. I would gladly trade places with anyone lucky enough to live in Minnesota. Value what you have, even if it isn’t always to your liking.
October 30th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
“I would gladly trade places with anyone lucky enough to live in Minnesota.”
Why not move there, then, Pete?
October 30th, 2013 at 1:55 pm
I work in a public-safety job where many people depend on me, Mingo. The minute I retire, I am outta here. No matter what happens in the future, the damage done to this state can never be repaired.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Specifics, Pete, or you’re just spouting to spout. Spouter.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:18 pm
In a state completely controlled by Hyperbole!
October 30th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Value what you have, even if it isn’t always to your liking.
Oh yeah, I just love the nanny state constantly telling me what I can and can’t do, and taking an ever larger portion of my money every year. Gimme more of that!
Some of us prefer independence. Minnesota is all about encouraging and forcing dependence.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:41 pm
It must not be so-o-o bad, Bill C. Why aren’t conservative Minnesotans moving to Wisconsin in droves? Because you know that we suck worse than nanny-state Minnesota? Hmmm.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:44 pm
“I work in a public-safety job where many people depend on me, Mingo. The minute I retire, I am outta here.”
Sounds more like you are depending on many people you hate to allow you to hang around long enough to tap them for your retirement.
You’re a hall monitor in a government school waiting for your fat PERA pension, right? No wonder you hate the Tea Party.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:45 pm
Still waiting on specifics there, Pete. Come on, Spouter McSpouts-a-Spout.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Linguistic tic there, Yossarian? Or is it a Tea Party thing?
October 30th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
swiftee: Wrong.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
I wanna move to a state where everyone else has to work until they are 70 so I can retire at 55!
Me, too, ol’ buddy. Me too.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
Just FYI, I live in high-tax, bluer-than-blue, high cost of living Hawaii.
When I retire I’m heading out. Probably North Carolina.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Mingo: 57, still workin’, gonna be workin’ til I’m at least 70. And believe me, you DON’T wanna move here. Stick with that “Minnesota Nice.”
October 30th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
No linguistic tic, here, Parrot Pete. Just calling you out for the hyperbolic claims you make with no supporting evidence (a.k.a. spouting).
Do try to keep up.
October 30th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
Er, “Hawaii Nice.” My bad.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Yossarian: Live for ONE MONTH in the gray hellhole that is Walker’s Wisconsin. Then tell me how I’m spouting.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Walker’s Wisconsin is only a hellhole for feckless public employee union thugs, lefty wombats, wankers, tossers and reprobates Pete, m’boy.
You identified yourself when you described your loyalty to duty as the length of time it takes you to permanently sink your teeth into the bank accounts of people you hate.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Mingo, by the time you retire N. Carolina may be just as bad as Hawaii…plenty of room for Freedom loving, patriotic Americans just south of their border though 😉
October 30th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
You are SO right, swiftee! Our guv’s got a signed copy of “Unintimidated: How I Became God” waiting fer yez!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to quit playing and go serve the people I hate. Which I’d gladly do for minimum wage and no bennies, just like you do at your job.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
This conservative Minnesotan would leave MN in a heartbeat, except I’m stuck in an upside down mortgage….thanks to Jimmy Carter, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
What do you mean by gray hellhole? Give us specifics about what is so bad under Walker. Or is it that you actually LIKE having an overbearing controlling government trying to dictate an ever larger share of how you live your life? In my opinion, those who wish for larger, more encroaching government fall into two camps: Those who desire more control over everything and everyone; and wimps, pussies and cowards. This same argument can directly be made about orcs as well. Those who hate guns and those who love control.
If you’re in public safety and you’re waiting to retire, that pretty much says you’re hanging on for the pension. Just keep this in mind: the difference between public and private sector employment is simple. Private sector workers have to prove they are worth their compensation. Public sector workers’ compensation is generated at gunpoint.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:32 pm
I was in Western Wisconsin this past July. Got kinfolk there. Also got some in MN. The biggest difference I could see between eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin was that, west of the St. Croix, if a car kills a deer, the highway department collects it. East of the St. Croix, they mark the carcass with a can of safety orange paint and let it go back to nature right there.
October 30th, 2013 at 3:46 pm
This Pete feller writes like past a past SITD commenter, a public employee in Wisconsin, with some opinions that put him in the neo-nazi category.
Can’t remember that guy’s moniker.
October 30th, 2013 at 4:08 pm
“Which I’d gladly do for minimum wage and no bennies, just like you do at your job.”
Riiiight. You’d do it because of your love and devotion….oh, and that fat pension you’re incubating. Pffft.
Honest to God; you people are pathetic.
October 30th, 2013 at 4:15 pm
You know, ever since Governor Walker got elected, I’ve noted that the clouds just hang around the middle of the St. Croix, as if daring a westerly wind to come and blow them into Minnesota. But somehow it never happens; d*** that Walker! And there is no more malt or hops, or curds and whey, in Wisconsin, and that fair, but now befouled, state’s once beautiful forests have been incinerated for fuel ever since Walker took office and took away all of the rightful benefits earned by the SEIU and others.
And formerly fat cheeseheads now eat tofu because there is no pork for brats, no cabbage for kraut, and the state’s beloved Badgers and Packers are winless this year. Oh, Ophelia, shed a tear for fair Wisconsin!
It’s about the same in the land of the Tar Heels….no pulled pork is left, they’re eating corn gruel, all the basketballs have left for Virginia, and the hills are barren except for abandoned stills. Hordes of starving children beg, door to door, for a cup of the leftovers from unemployed moonshiners, and half-naked people are selling themselves for frayed Benny Parsons shirts from the 1973 Winston Cup.
Oh, if only we’d listened to the AFL-CIO and UAW, and not subverted decades of Democratic, I mean union, progress!
Pete, not to be blunt, but I think you’re stretching credibility a bit when you say (a) you’re in a Tea Party only state and (b) the sky is gray above such states. Especially when it’s clear that even North Carolina is not a Tea Party only state.
October 30th, 2013 at 4:30 pm
bikebubba, you forgot to mention the evil Koch brothers.
Otherwise, great essay, but failing to mention the evil Koch brothers is deal breaker. It’s like talking about the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust without mentioning Hitler or the nazis.
It’s just like that.
October 30th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
Live for ONE MONTH in the gray hellhole that is Walker’s Wisconsin. Then tell me how I’m spouting.
I don’t have to tell you how you’re spouting. Your comment is self-spouting.
Explain this “gray hellhole” hyperbole in further detail. I go through Wisconsin at least twice a month; aside from the battlefield of deer carcasses littering the interstate, I see and experience nothing that even remotely validates your Chicken Little missives here.
October 30th, 2013 at 4:43 pm
My grandkids live in New Richmond and we buzz over from St. Paul all the time. Haven’t noticed any gray. Actually seems to be thriving, no vacant buildings on the main drag, restaurants full, new school to handle all the kids. Maybe Pete lives in Madison? That’d be a gray, dreary, depressing place for a Liberal these days, what with all the budget surplusses and proposed property tax cuts. Not like St. Paul at all.
October 30th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Pete,
I hear you. I do.
It’s just very much at odds with everything I’ve heard from everyone else I know in Wisconsin who isn’t a public-union militant.
There’s a disconnect. KnowhatImean?
October 30th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
Powhatan;good point. I’m actually kind of proud I neglected that one, ifyaknowwhatImean. :^)
October 30th, 2013 at 7:41 pm
I grew up in Wisconsin and much of my family still lives there, quite happily. I don’t see any evidence that it’s especially gray at all. Green and gold and cardinal red, yes. Gray, not so much.
October 31st, 2013 at 5:14 am
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October 31st, 2013 at 6:36 am
Americans have been given the opportunity to learn quite a bit about the Tea Party over the past few weeks.
October 31st, 2013 at 9:14 am
Oh, do go on, Emery.
That’s right. You will.
October 31st, 2013 at 10:25 am
I would caution anyone who stays on the job, public safety in particular, because their public needs them, to remember where that got the late Senator Welstone. May he rest in peace.
October 31st, 2013 at 10:57 am
If Emery was around in 1773, I’m sure he would have been proud to call himself a “King George man”.
October 31st, 2013 at 11:46 am
The proof will be in the pudding.
Tuesday is the test day, of a sort, with two prominent southern elections involving a battle between the tea party extremists and everyone else – including the right.
In Virginia, there are state wide elections, with the Cooch losing badly, not only because of corruption charges, but because of people who are fed up with the tea party. Depending on which poll you look at, the Cooch is losing by 10 to 15% – and that includes Independents, and Democrats, but also a surprisingly large percentage of Republicans too.
Opposition to tea party reaches a high in Virginia, according to poll
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/opposition-to-tea-party-reaches-new-high-in-virginia-according-to-new-poll/2013/10/29/cad76b00-40b3-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html
And in the deepest of the deep south, we have a battle royal next Tuesday between the Tea Party radicals and the rest of the more main-stream Right in a primary:
U.S. Chamber Takes on Alabama Tea Party in House Contest
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/u-s-chamber-takes-on-alabama-tea-party-in-house-contest.html
What makes the Tea Party astro-turfed is that it is funded and controlled by big money on the right that uses entities like FreedomWorks to direct the grass roots gullible few remaining, through funding influential right wing media like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, as well to the tune of $1 million in what amounts to paid advertising for the tea party elite bosses.
Here is what makes for a fair claim the tea party is astro-turfed: less than $100k came from small doners, while millions upon millions came from the big donors who are hugely influential in the tea party:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/freedomworks-rich-donors-armey-kibbe-super-pac#update
Powerful Tea Party Group’s Internal Docs Leak—Read Them Here
“Well-heeled individual contributors ponied up $31 million—or 94 percent—of those major gifts, according to the FreedomWorks board book. Eight donors gave a half-million dollars or more; 22 donated between $100,000 and $499,999; 17 cut checks between $50,000 and $99,999; and 95 gave between $10,000 and $49,999. Foundations contributed $1.6 million in major gifts, and corporations donated $330,000. Corporations once accounted for more of FreedomWorks’ hefty donations. In a memo included in the report, David Kirby, FreedomWork’s vice president for development, and senior adviser Terry Kibbe wrote, “This year continued our trend of relying less and less on corporate support.” At the same time FreedomWorks expanded its small donor ranks from 41,794 in 2011 to 81,081 in 2012. More than 30,000 of those small donors gave between a dollar and $99 this year.”
Now you might try to claim that groups like Protect Minnesota or other entities that you don’t like are ‘astro-turfed’, but the reality is they get NOTHING like this kind of funding, and they have enormously MORE genuine grass roots support.
And you conveniently leave out that when the Tea Party doesn’t come to heel the big money gives them a leash correction to make them do as they are told – which is why Karl Rove started up his Conservative Victory project, and why other conservative organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are spending big bucks to defeat the Tea Party in primaries, and promise to do the same in future general elections.
The tea party is astro-turfed, and they are losing ground from the center, from independents as well as the left, and even from the right. As the right wing money dries up – and it has noticeably in 2013 compared to 2012, the tea party is drying up and blowing away too — with some assistance from Conservative Victory, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others, notably the SuperPAC of members of congress like Eric Cantor.
As the tea party loses their primary leverage, and the support of less extreme conservatives in general elections, they lose pretty much everything.
October 31st, 2013 at 12:06 pm
DG; dr.
October 31st, 2013 at 12:39 pm
DG once again indulges in the non sequitor driven grandiose condescension that is so clearly the hallmark of your average meth/coke addict.
October 31st, 2013 at 12:55 pm
DG,
I’ll say this: you’ve done a great job in furthering the craft of fact-checking. I pretty much read what you write on just about any policy issue, and assume the opposite is true.
At the risk of sounding condescending, it’s rarely served me wrong.
But hey – at least we’ve moved from “The Tea Party is bringing us a wave of violence” to “the Tea Party is astroturf”. It’s a start.
October 31st, 2013 at 1:02 pm
As to “Protect MN” – well, yeah, you’re right. “Protect MN” and “Moms Want Action” get fewer absolute dollars from big donors than the National Tea Party (assuming your figures are correct, which I do not, and history shows I’d be completely daft to be, but for sake of argument, whatever).
But – here’s a crucial difference – FreedomWorks operates in all fifty states. PM and MWA operate “in Minnesota”, meaning “in the Metro”, really meaning “in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties”.
You can see the difference, can’t you?
The big difference? PM and MWA, with at the most a dozen “members”, get nearly EVERY DIME of their funding from big out of state liberals with deep pockets. Their analogous competition in Minnesota, GOCRA, with over 20,000 members, gets NOT A DIME from out of state.
But keep the inapt comparisons coming.
October 31st, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Anyway, DG: Maybe I”ll look into the numbers you cited and – inevitably – find they’re wrong. Maybe someone’ll beat me to it. It won’t matter. You won’t read the response. It’s getting rude.
October 31st, 2013 at 1:06 pm
PS to everyone but DG: Am I the only one waiting for DG to proclaim “Why are you writing about Lou Reed? He was a liberal!”, or what?
October 31st, 2013 at 1:10 pm
“In Virginia, there are state wide elections, with the Cooch losing badly…Depending on which poll you look at, the Cooch is losing by 10 to 15%”
FAAAAAAACTCHECK! 2 Hrs ago: “Poll: McAuliffe Leads Cuccinelli By Four Points.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/31/ken-cuccinelli_n_4181659.html
Dang, hope that smackdown hurt Cur as bad as it did the back of my rhetorical hand.
October 31st, 2013 at 1:18 pm
And now, I shall pile on…
“Poll: Virginia governor race a nail-biter”
http://www.politico.com/…/10/…cuccinelli-terry-mcauliffe-poll-99080.html
*smack*
“Good News for Cuccinelli in Latest Virginia Poll”
blogs.wsj.com/…/30/good-news-for-cuccinelli-in-latest-virginia-poll
*Bap*
“New poll: Cuccinelli closing gap in governor’s race”
*Smeck*
I love FACTCHECKing Mongrel Cur.
October 31st, 2013 at 1:28 pm
I think the only enjoyment or entertainment I derive these days from DG’s comments are to see how politely Mitch tells her what an idiot she makes of herself …….. and to recalibrate my estimate as to when she will finally get the hammer …….