Support for the Tea Party is in a free fall. According to a Pew Research Center study conducted between November 9-14 and released earlier this week, 27 percent of the general public now disagrees with the Tea Party, nearly double the 14 percent who said so in March 2010. The number of people who agree fell from 24 percent to 20 percent. And within districts represented by Tea Party-loyal members of Congress, the trend is perhaps strongest: The number of people who disagree with the Tea Party has more than doubled from just 10 percent in March 2010 to 23 percent today. The number of people who agree has also fallen from 31 percent to 25 percent in the same period. Regarding the Tea Party, in any case, it would appear that familiarity breeds contempt.
These numbers should not be so surprising. (Nor should the fact that, if you look closely at the Pew numbers, a good half of America is not really paying attention to the Tea Party one way or another.) In fact, it's consistent with what we know about who actually makes up the Tea Party movement rather than the overhyped movement that so many in the mainstream media led us to believe was poised to take over America.
The New Yorker's Ben McGrath described the Tea Party as a motley collection of "goldbugs, evangelicals, Atlas Shruggers, militia-men, strict Constitutionalists, swine-flu skeptics, scattered 9/11 'truthers,' neo-'Birchers,' and, of course, 'birthers '-- those who remained convinced that [President Barack Obama] was a Muslim double agent born in Kenya," intent on turning the United States into an Islamic Republic. This group also turned up anywhere Fox News promised to send cameras for much of Obama's presidency.
Four academics confirmed this telling portrait. They recently presented a study of the views and attitudes of 2,000 voters sympathetic to the Tea Party at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. The study said that these voters "reflect four primary cultural and political beliefs more than other voters do: authoritarianism, libertarianism, fear of change, and negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration."
And homophobia. No doubt many Tea Partiers disagreed when the Tennessee Tea Party chapter tweeted that retiring Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) was a "perverted sodomite POS!!" But many did not. (Not even, it would appear, the person charged with apologizing for it.)
The one issue that apparently unites this motley crew of Tea Partiers is the allegedly unfair levels of taxation paid by Americans, although this has to be a product of either misinformation or mass hysteria. In fact, as you can learn from Think Progress, the United States "actually collects the third-lowest amount of tax revenue" as a percentage of gross domestic product -- the largest measure of economic growth -- among the member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD. According to the OECD's latest data, Mexico (18.7 percent in 2010) and Chile (20.9 percent) have the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios among OECD countries, while the United States has the third lowest ratio in the OECD at 24.8 percent, with South Korea at 25.1 percent and Turkey at 26 percent.
The fact is this -- anyone paying careful attention could have told you that the Tea Party was simply the old far right dressed up in funny new clothing. Its numbers historically hover between one-fifth and one-third of all voters depending on the times. These were the people who thought President George W. Bush was still doing a bang-up job at the end of his catastrophic presidency. Hence, pretty much nothing can make them rethink what they believe they know to be true.
Interestingly, the opposite dynamic appears to be at work in the coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is far more popular with the public than with the media. Even before its current slide in popularity, the Tea Party was never even remotely as popular as the Occupy Wall Street movement was when it began and remains today. As CAP's Ruy Teixeira demonstrated back in October, the movement's favorability rating was already "twice as high as that of the conservative Tea Party movement." Teixeira noted that 54 percent of the public, according to a Time/Abt SRBI poll, said they were "favorable to the movement that has been protesting policies that 'favor the rich, the government's bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system.'"
And according to an October Pew poll, fully 60 percent of those who followed news about the protests very closely last week said they supported the Occupy Wall Street movement while just 31 percent opposed it. These people had to work hard to keep up with the news about the movement, however, as news about the movement accounted for just 7 percent of coverage during the week in question. This wasn't much, but it was still almost quadruple the level it had been just one week earlier.
And when the mainstream media did cover the protests, many outlets tended to focus on its more outlandish aspects and rarely on their substantive arguments. In this respect, as in so many others, the majority of the American people demonstrate in their response to polls that they are more savvy and sophisticated about the news than the people ostensibly charged with explaining it to them.
There's a further irony here: These Tea Party types can't take "yes" for an answer.
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Yahoo! Nabs Republican #OWS Media Talking Points - FishbowlLA
By its Conservative Corporate owners.
The common theme is the desire to control people and the encouraging and rewarding of the "desired human type". The controllable human type. And the sidelining and punishing of the "hated human type". The independent uncontrollable human.
Because that was October. Before they started making a$$es of themselves.
From the DailyKos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/16/1037042/-Support-for-Occupy-Wall-Street-drops-innewpoll)
"Q. Do you have a higher opinion of the Occupy Wall Street movement or the Tea Party movement?
Occupy Wall Street: 37 (40)
Tea Party: 43 (37)
Not sure: 20 (23)"
"And when the mainstream media did cover the protests, many outlets tended to focus on its more outlandish aspects and rarely on their substantive arguments. "
That's because everyone's HEARD your message! We've heard it a thousand times! At least! "Rich people are bad! They should pay more taxes!"
OK, we got it. Transmission received. You can stop crapping in the park now.
You complain that the news only focuses on their outlandish aspects, but what else should they do? They're not coming up with anything new. They're just repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. What should the media do? Have a different OWSer on every day so he can say "Rich people are bad and should pay more taxes."? What would be the point of that?
And I'm sure you think the media should ALSO ignore the fact that these people are fighting with the cops, being disruptive, and basically acting like a bunch of toddlers up past their bedtime. Well. Maybe they should stop DOING that stuff. Then the media wouldn't be able to show it on the news.
Every stupid thing the Tea Party has ever done has been trumpeted through the media. I still hear people making comments about "Get your government hands off my Medicare!", which was one guy's sign at one event a couple years ago. But you want the media to just ignore people shooting each other, covering up sexual assaults, destroying public property, and fighting with cops? Unreal.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/get-your-goddamn-governme_b_252326.html
You simplify the OWS message and mischaracterize it creating a strawman. And you have missed the entire point of why they are "occupying" physical space.
You will never understand because you don't want to understand.
Both are political protest relics of the recession that is now ending.
Economic downturns produce political protest movements.
There was great interest in both Socialism and Fascism in the US during the 1930's.
That interest dwindled with economic recovery.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150896/support-occupy-unchanged-criticize-approach.aspx
Perhaps Ike's 1961 warning of the M I C was missing the 4th estate as a player in the corruption of U S democratic institutions. Clearly he was calling a spade a spade and had more than fisrthand knowledge of the greed and addiction to power which OFFED his successor!