WaPo:
Is there such a thing as a tea party Democrat? The answer, it seems, is yes. Polls show the group exists, but determining its impact is difficult. What role the group could play in the 2012 elections is even murkier, except as a rallying cry for Republicans who say the movement is a bigger tent than it appears.
Recently, Republican leaders have gone out of their way to make the argument that the tea party is more than just a group of (somewhat) disaffected Republicans who are angry about government spending they perceive to be out of control and the large size of the federal government.
Republicans contend that the tea party movement, which surged in the 2010 midterm elections, includes not just Republicans but also independents and Democrats.
In announcing her 2012 presidential bid this month, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) described the tea party this way: “It’s made up of disaffected Democrats. It’s made up of independents. It’s made up of people who have never been political a day in their life.”
In March, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael S. Steele said there are “many Democrats, conservative Democrats, in the tea party movement.”
And at a 2012 presidential forum in New Orleans in June, Bachmann estimated that the tea party consists of 60 percent Republicans, 20 percent independents and 20 percent Democrats.
Democratic leaders, meanwhile, tend to dismiss the tea party as a bloc of voters who are bound to vote Republican.
So who’s right?
This answer lies, as it often does in politics, somewhere in the middle.
Polling has never shown Democrats to be 20 percent of the tea party, as Bachmann claims, but it has shown there are a significant number of Democrats who claim to be part of the movement. Often, that number is somewhere around 10 percent.
The Winston Group, a GOP polling firm, last year showed that 13 percent of tea partyers were Democrats; Gallup put the number at 15 percent.
I don’t know about you but I drink coffee. Or beer.
But whatever floats your boat.
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Doh!
Gallup….last year, WaPo should read it
http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspx
Yep. Demographically, they are almost an EXACT representation of America as a whole.in terms of age, employment status, income, education level, and race.
Considering that the Dems are losing registration (as are the R’s), I would also bet that some of those Independents in the teapary numbers were also recently Democrats.
The 10- 15% number is only those who still self-identify as Democrats. There may be a lot more who WERE Democrats until President Disaster (D- Dickville). I’ve never attended a teaparty, but friends and family who have tell me that they chat with lots of disgusted no-longer-Dems. That’s anecdotal, but still.
It’s like cockroaches. If one sees one cockroach, you can be certain that there are many one is not seeing.
I didn’t mean to call TP people cockroaches. I just wanted to use the analogy.
All hail to Astroturf TeaBparty Queen (ATQ), Michele Bachmann. Isn’t she the one that who rails against the Federal Government while every year she benefits from Federal Medicaid Payments for her Clinic, Federal farm subsidies (talk about a Corporate Welfare Queen), and adopts kids to work them on same farm. Oh yeah she is also a self-proclaimed historian on the US Founding Fathers and US history. The sad truth she will lie to get her way, what honor is there in that? But if you manipulate our US history and double down when you are found out, well don’t go crying to Fake News when you lose. Kind of like the Former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Most recent quitter of her Bus Tour to restore America). We remember what happen when after “W” manipulate Florida (w/ the help of brother Jebb) to win the presidency and his failure to win any of the two wars he started that devastated our treasury and ruined our economy for the next 50 years. If the GOP thinks that Michele Bachmann is the answer, good luck with that. After her “John Wayne” mishap and Tom Petty, calling her a thief, well you know, same old Bachmann, you have a winner GOP.
That reminds me, we should have another “drunken rant open thread” one of these days.
Warn me ahead of time – it takes me a while to get there. I don’t drink often, and I don;t drink fast.
We gotta make sure Angie is there too.
That’s a whole lotta crazy right there.
Certainly seems to be lots of repressed anger.
Or not so repressed…
Next they’ll be going after the kids. Probably already buzy digging into the lives of the foster children.
This comment just convinced me that MB is the person I should vote for.
Oh, yeah, election season is heating up – we are getting some incomprehensible drooling trolls! I forgot what those were like. I hope we get some really good ones soon. They’re tasty.
Oh, and if GWB ruined the economy for “the next 50 years!! EleVentY!!!!”, and it’s all hopeless and nothing could be done, then why the fuck did your Messiah assure us all he was up to the job of fixing it, hmmm?
Also I am not sure why you come here to address the GOP, since this is not the GOP – just some freethinking folks of a fairly wide spectrum.
I just used the google
The commenter has posted the same gibberish all over the internet.
Jeezus, you would think if someone was going to spam something around the innertoobz they would get someone to proofread it first.
LOL! Ah, the troll army begins anew. It’s rather sad. Obama used to have some decent, subtle, clever, or at least marginally understandable trolls. If this is his online advance team for 2012, he’s in deeper shit than I thought.
They’re sending us trolls?
We’ve hit the big time!
*kitty pout* It’s no fun when they die that fast. I like to bat them around for awhile before I kill them.
The bad writing is intentional – it makes it seem authentic, as if a real person posted it.
Heh, reminds me of once seeing some “hand knitted” sweaters in a Donna Karan store. I complained to a friend in the know that the knitting was so poor. She said “Yes, but if it wasn’t, buyers wouldn’t believe they were hand made.”
Wouldn’t be surprised if they have machines fixed to do the poor knitting, lol.
Also, what the hell was that word salad that you just vomited all over the place? I’ve seen better organized mental processes in schizophrenics. Was that supposed to be some sort of expression of thoughts and ideas? You’re really bad at this whole communicating coherently thing, aren’t you? Maybe you should just stick to tweeting. Or wanking off. Or eating paste.
To start, that’s the reason for the person’s problem, and to continue the practice would make it worse.
He probably ate paint chips as a kid.
Which was last week.
I wonder if he has been tested for heavy metals? It could have been lead exposure as a child, poor thing.
crawdad, great minds. It was simultaneous. I did not see yours.
I thought about it too, but decided not to post that. I guess the problem is obvious.
People like Michele Bachmann used to be Democrats (she met her husband when they were working for the Carter campaign). Therefore, Democrats are potential racists.
AK has released new SP emails. I guess we won’t have the media frenzy of the first release.
Maybe the LSM is finally learning.
Money can’t by love:
Mittens is the establishment candidate. He should be raising way more than that. His goal was $50 million.
Politico
11% for the undeclared candidate Palin who has been in NH once. Duh.
Romney needs to raise more than his competitors combined.
WP
In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts
Because that’s what he was elected to do.
It looks that way.
“And at a 2012 presidential forum in New Orleans in June, Bachmann estimated that the tea party consists of 60 percent Republicans, 20 percent independents and 20 percent Democrats.”
The 60% sounds familiar from some respectable poll months ago. I don’t remember if they broke down the 40%.
I agree that some of the Independents were probably former Democrats. For that matter, so were some of the Republicans.
I’d love to know what % of the self-identified Democrats in the Tea Party are women.
(Posting late, jetlag!)