Author Topic: Tea Party support falls to near-record low  (Read 2471 times)

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Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« on: September 26, 2013, 01:38:41 pm »
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/324771-tea-party-hits-a-low-point-


Tea Party support falls to near-record low
By Rebecca Shabad - 09/26/13 08:11 AM ET

Public support for the Tea Party has fallen to a near-record low, with just 22 percent of people supporting the grassroots conservative movement, according to a new Gallup poll released Thursday.

As Congress tries to avert a government shutdown Oct. 1, and deal with the debt ceiling again, the movement is losing its base, the poll found.

The Tea Party was at its peak in the 2010 midterm elections after Republicans recaptured the majority in the House that November. Gallup says 32 percent of people pledged support for the Tea Party at the time.

Now, about half of people in the U.S. say they neither support nor oppose the movement, or have no opinion about it, the survey indicates.

While Tea Party supporters mostly associate with the Republican Party, their close relationship may be waning, Gallup says.

Fifty-five percent favor the GOP, and 43 percent have an unfavorable view.

In fact, Tea Party supporters may feel just as negatively about the GOP as they do about Democrats. .

Sens. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are some of the most prominent Tea Party members in Congress. The first two are potential GOP contenders for the 2016 presidential race.

Cruz and Lee ignited the ongoing defund ObamaCare fight, convincing GOP House leadership to pursue it in the government spending bill needed to avert a government shutdown.

The House passed the bill with defunding language last week.

From Tuesday into Wednesday afternoon, Cruz, with Lee’s help, attacked President Obama’s healthcare law on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours ahead of a Senate vote to move forward on the House bill.

Many of Cruz’s Republican colleagues have questioned the freshman senator Texas’s political tactics, which may be a sign of their frustration with the Tea Party as a whole.


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Offline sinkspur

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2013, 02:12:07 pm »
When the objective of a movement is "let's just burn it all down," there should be no surprise that 78% of the country wants nothing to do with it.

Cruz won't win a primary with those kinds of numbers, let alone an election.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Offline Lipstick on a Hillary

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2013, 02:20:55 pm »
I think GOPBR should throw a big celebration when Congress's own approval rating crashes through its current 7% ceiling.

 :silly:

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2013, 02:28:49 pm »
When the objective of a movement is "let's just burn it all down," there should be no surprise that 78% of the country wants nothing to do with it.

Cruz won't win a primary with those kinds of numbers, let alone an election.

Guess what?

The supposedly low numbers don't mean a thing to the "tea party"....because THERE AIN'T NO "TEA PARTY"!

Oh.....'they' are out there....but there's no formal organization.  Most "Tea Party" members don't even realize they're members.

But they will be there next election day....bet on it.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2013, 02:29:17 pm by DCPatriot »
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Offline sinkspur

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2013, 02:34:58 pm »
Guess what?

The supposedly low numbers don't mean a thing to the "tea party"....because THERE AIN'T NO "TEA PARTY"!

Oh.....'they' are out there....but there's no formal organization.  Most "Tea Party" members don't even realize they're members.

But they will be there next election day....bet on it.

No they won't.  It's the tea party that elected Obama by staying home on election day in 2012.  They'll do it again in 2014 and think they're doing something "noble" and "principled" when all they're doing is shooting themselves.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Offline MBB1984

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2013, 02:47:07 pm »
Cruz won't win a primary with those kinds of numbers, let alone an election.


Twenty-Two percent support the Tea party.  What percent of those are Republicans?  Probably 100%.    Republicans constitute approximately 40% of the US population.  Based on those facts, the Tea Party likely is a majority of Republican voters.

If Cruz can lock down the Tea Party Voters, Cruz should win most of the GOP primaries.   

Offline sinkspur

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2013, 02:52:11 pm »

Twenty-Two percent support the Tea party.  What percent of those are Republicans?  Probably 100%.    Republicans constitute approximately 40% of the US population.  Based on those facts, the Tea Party likely is a majority of Republican voters.

If Cruz can lock down the Tea Party Voters, Cruz should win most of the GOP primaries.

You go right ahead and believe that if it makes you feel good.   
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2013, 03:08:18 pm »
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/11/Lesson-to-Future-Republican-Hopefuls-Ignore-the-Tea-Party-at-Your-Peril

 by Joel B. Pollak 11 Nov 2012 355 post a comment
In late 2011, long before the first caucuses and primaries of the 2012 election, I had the opportunity to speak with someone high up in Mitt Romney’s finance world, and warned him that the conservative base wasn’t warming to the party’s presumptive nominee. The longer Romney keeps the Tea Party at arm’s length, I said, the tougher his chances at winning the general election, presuming he can win the Republican nomination first.

Nonsense, I was told. Those people will all come around in the general election. They will vote for Romney to get rid of Obama.

Perhaps, I answered. But don’t be so sure--right now there are some who would rather sit through another four years of Obama than endure a Republican who they imagine will sell them out at the first opportunity. The time for Romney reach out to the conservative base is now, before it is too late.

In the end, Romney did not reach out. Many in the Tea Party grass roots did, eventually, back the Republican nominee. Many came to like and admire Romney, especially after his strong performance in the debates. The renewed enthusiasm of conservatives for the political fight encouraged many--myself included--to believe Republicans would see strong turnout at the polls. But there were millions who had checked out already.

The traditional pattern is for candidates to appeal to their party’s base in the primary and then to pivot to the center in the general election. The danger is that statements made in the primary will be used against the candidate later.

But the danger of not appealing to the base is that they will vote for other candidates, or stay home. Romney both feared association with the Tea Party and knew that he faced a weak field. So he held back.

Romney had bought into the mainstream media hype about the Tea Party--which reached a fever pitch of hysteria during the debt ceiling negotiations of July 2011. He saw association with the Tea Party as potentially toxic, and limited his contact with the movement. The suspicion was mutual, and there were a few early protests by Tea Party groups against him. He did little to heal the breach until he had won the nomination.

Contrary to mainstream media spin, Romney never really “ran right” in the primary. The one issue on which he took an awkwardly hard line was immigration. He did so partly to thwart challenges by Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (whose reformist policy, while defensible, suffered from the assumption that those who opposed it were heartless). It was the one issue on which he felt forced to toughen up.

Romney likely paid for that hard line in the general election, bleeding Hispanic votes to President Barack Obama, even losing among Cuban-Americans in Florida, traditionally a solid Republican constituency. Had Romney solidified his bona fides with the GOP’s conservative grass roots, he may not have felt the need to overreach on immigration. He also might have enjoyed a shorter primary.

And in the end, Romney lost what were probably Tea Party votes, as well as a potential army of Tea Party volunteers (some of whom showed up anyway and were responsible for his strong showing in places like Roanoke, VA). The GOP even let CNN appropriate the Tea Party label, running its own “Tea Party” debate. A few Tea Party candidates did win--others lost badly--but the movement never really mobilized.

Lesson for the future: ignore the Tea Party grass roots at your peril.
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Offline sinkspur

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2013, 03:11:43 pm »
Lesson for the tea partiers:  How's Obama workin' out for ya?
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Online andy58-in-nh

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #9 on: September 26, 2013, 03:32:33 pm »

Twenty-Two percent support the Tea party.  What percent of those are Republicans?  Probably 100%.    Republicans constitute approximately 40% of the US population.  Based on those facts, the Tea Party likely is a majority of Republican voters.

If Cruz can lock down the Tea Party Voters, Cruz should win most of the GOP primaries.

The Tea Party activists who comprise a large part of the GOP's base are hated by Progressives of both the Democrat and Republican parties.  They are falsely accused of being anarchists (and worse) because they dare to challenge the permanent political class. I see that even Republicans have adopted the Straw Man arguments so favored by Obama in order to disparage them and mischaracterize their arguments.

If you believe in reducing the size of our Federal government to what it was, say, in 1980 - you're an "anarchist" who want to "burn it down". If you maintain that Medicaid and Social Security spending cannot be maintained - you are a "radical". And you hate old people.

Two words: Horse. Shit.

The truth is that the leaders of both parties now firmly believe in big government (enriching themselves at our expense) and will refuse all reforms to unsustainable spending programs; denying that they are unsustainable even in the face of mathematics, as though it were a matter of opinion. I have news for them - math always wins. There is not enough money in the world to pay our unfunded liabilities even now - and we will not grow our way out of it. Tea Party people are the only ones willing to tell our Emperors that they have no clothes.

Unsurprisingly, the Emperors don't like it.  That includes the news media.

And by the way - blaming the Tea Party for Obama's victory in 2012 might just be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I worked the phones for weeks for Mitt Romney, making thousands upon thousands of calls. And guess who was manning the phones in all of the offices I visited? Tea Party members, that's who -and Romney wasn't nearly our first choice. And you know what the number one complaint was about Romney among the people I spoke to? That he didn't seem to stand for anything. That he didn't really seem to be a conservative. And so, he did not inspire people to come to the polls in sufficient numbers to overcome the Democrats well-oiled fraud machine. 

Activists are the ones who turn out the vote. There are people who actually get off their asses to help save America, as opposed to those who bloviate about how we conservatives shouldn't be so "angry" or "divisive". Screw that. My country is being destroyed, by increasing degrees.

And if GOP Progressives don't like it, they need to get the hell out of the Republican Party, because America doesn't need Tweedledum and Tweedledee as their only remaining choices.
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Offline MBB1984

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2013, 05:50:43 pm »
Lesson for the tea partiers:  How's Obama workin' out for ya?

Last I checked, neither McCain or Romney were Tea Party candidates.  They were much closer to your political ideology.... and lost. 

Offline mountaineer

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #11 on: September 26, 2013, 06:07:18 pm »
Last I checked, neither McCain or Romney were Tea Party candidates.  They were much closer to your political ideology.... and lost.  :beer:
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Offline Lipstick on a Hillary

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2013, 06:24:52 pm »
Opposition to Tea Party drops to near-record low

But it you look at Gallup's chart, it shows a 2% drop in support for the Tea Party in the past year and a 2% drop in opposition to the Tea Party, and both are near record lows.



Why highlight just the drop in support?  Because.

Moreover, the percentage of people who consider themselves Tea Pary supporters is slightly larger than those who consider themselves liberal, as measured in Gallup’s ideological self-identification survey from 2012.

Considering the multi-year war on the Tea Party by Democrats, many Republicans, and the media, it is astounding that the Tea Party continues to stay more or less even in its support over the past two years.  A 2% drop is hardly meaningful, and could just be variations within the margin of error in the poll, which was +/- 3%.

Also consider that half the electorate has no opinion one way or the other.  So put it another way, almost 3/4 of the American electorate is not opposed to the Tea Party!

Think about it another way, if you were at a dinner table with four other people who represented the American electorate, one of the people at the table would be a Tea Party supporter.  And two others would have no opinion.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Update: If Gallup wanted to be completely neutral, it could have written its headline as “Support and Opposition to Tea Party Stable.” Instead, Gallup’s anti-Tea Party spin is being picked up gladly at outlets such as TPM...

<snip>

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Tea Party support falls to near-record low
« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2013, 06:48:02 pm »
Keep in mind that thanks to the IRS most of the "Tea Party" groups have never received their 501c status and have been unable to fundraise or do much activism as a result.  By contrast the progressive anti-GOP, anti-Tea Party groups all breezed to their 501c's and get financial support from Soros...    ergo I take reports like this with a grain of salt. 
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