I have to admit it. I was wrong about the Tea Party.
The historical analogy I was drawing on was the Klan in the 1920s. For the past 30 years or so, historians have shown that its membership did not fit the stereotype of the poor white southerner,
Instead, the Klan was far more complex than that. It wasn't just Southern for one thing; the state with the largest Klan membership was Indiana. In addition, detailed examination of membership rolls have indicated that the typical hooded bigot was a middle class citizen, worried about declining fortunes, about losing income as the economy and society shifted.
I figured the Tea Partiers were the same kind of folks, people who couldn't deal with the modern world and its changes. Also bigots; that part we all got right, but it's no revelation.
The New York Times, however, turned up a different truth. Last week they released the first serious poll of Tea Party members. And there's lots of news here.
Most important of all, the Klan analogy does not hold up. These are not lower middle class folks scared of giving up ground. It turns out that Tea Party stalwarts are more affluent and better educated than the rest of us. Twenty percent have incomes over $100,000 a year, compared to only 14% of all adults surveyed. The figures on education are even more striking: 37% of the baggers have a college or graduate degree; only 25% of the general population had achieved this.
So who are these protesters? Demographically, they are male, white and older. On gender, the figures are 59% male compared to 49% of those interviewed. On race, it comes out as 89% white instead of 77%. Seventy-five percent are 45 years of age or older, instead of 50%.
They are also conservative. Very, very conservative. In simplest terms, we don't need liberal, academic, do-gooder explanations to analyze this phenomenon. It's just a fringe conservative movement.
And that is a very good thing. The figures show clearly that this is not a mainstream group of any kind, and definitely not a popular one either. These folks, instead, are marginal; not economically or socially, just way to the right of the American people.
Take a look at some of these results. Forty-three percent of American adults approve of President Obama, the survey found. For Republicans, the figure is 14%, no surprise. But for Tea Partiers, it's only 7%, or half the figure for the party of the rich. The bag people are way out of step here.
Or take a look at these figures. Only 17% of Americans approve of Congress. For Republicans the comparable number is 15%. But for the Tea Party it is 1%. Wing-nuts, indeed.
So what do these people believe? Of the national sample, 42% of all Americans feel the federal government should focus more on reducing the budget, and less on creating jobs. Less than half, in other words. Is this a great country or what?
Among Republicans, the figure reverses itself, to 59%. So much for compassionate conservatives.
But for tea party believers, it is a whopping 76%. Screw the poor; I've got mine.
Here's one that will surprise you...not. When asked if too much has been made in recent years of problems facing blacks, only 28% of people agreed with that claim. If you're a Republican, the figure rises to 41%; nevertheless, more than half the members of the Grand Old Party still disagree. When it comes to the Tea Party, however, the figures flips and becomes a majority, 52%. These guys are bigots, even by Republican standards.
They're also not keen on women's rights. Fifty-eight percent of Americans support the Roe v. Wade decision. Only 48% of Reps do so, and only 40% of Baggers support the right to choose. This is not a libertarian movement, in other words, just a retrogressive one.
So the Tea Party movement is not made up of poor, displaced folks who deserve our understanding. They're just a marginal group of conservatives, making a lot of noise but out of step with the broader populace. They're still going to have an impact--possibly a big one--in the short term, but over the long haul this is not what the American people believe in, by a big factor.
There's one other question that also might explain a lot of this. Twenty-three percent of our fellow citizens get most of their information from Fox News. The figure for Republicans is 46%. For the Tea Party: 63%.