10 Reasons Why the Tea Party is So Unpopular

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/tea-party-more-unpopular-ever



1. They really don’t care about America as a nation. For the past 25 years, Pew said that polls routinely find that about 55 percent of American voters want representatives in Congress to put local concerns ahead of “what they think is best for the country.” Tea Partiers disproportionately take that view. “Among Tea Party Republicans, fully 76 percent say members should vote against a bill their constituents oppose, even if he or she thinks it is in the best interest of the country,” Pew said. “Just 22 percent say the lawmaker should prioritize the national interest.”

2. Forget national solutions to national problems. Since three-quarters of Tea Partiers value a confederacy of GOP-run provinces more than an effective national government, it’s not surprising that they are always talking about making government smaller. But, as Pew found, that rhetoric means dismantling big public programs and overlooking public needs that were behinf their creation in the first place.

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3. They don’t believe in new government debt. Despite all the warnings by economists and even foreign leaders, such as Italy’s prime minister speaking at the White House on Thursday—who feared a default would raise global interest rates and spark a downward spiral—69 percent of Tea Parties said it was “not essential” to raise the U.S. debt limit, Pew said. That was 25 percent higher than “non-Tea Party” Republicans, Pew said.

4. They think Wall St. should be deregulated. Even though 2008’s global economic collapse started on Wall Street with bad bets by investors on the U.S. housing market, 79 percent of Tea Partiers say that government had gone too far with “regulating financial institutions,” Pew said. That was 26 percent higher than non-Tea Party Republicans.