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Tea Party support falls to near-record low

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MBB1984:

--- Quote from: sinkspur on September 26, 2013, 02:12:07 pm ---Cruz won't win a primary with those kinds of numbers, let alone an election.

--- End quote ---


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.   

sinkspur:

--- Quote from: MBB1984 on September 26, 2013, 02:47:07 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.

--- End quote ---

You go right ahead and believe that if it makes you feel good.   

mystery-ak:
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.

sinkspur:
Lesson for the tea partiers:  How's Obama workin' out for ya?

andy58-in-nh:

--- Quote from: MBB1984 on September 26, 2013, 02:47:07 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.

--- End quote ---

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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