Bob Altemeyer's "Comment on the Tea Party Movement"

Since they're being haled by MSM pundits as the movers, shakers, and kingmakers of today's body politic, I think it behooves us to try to make an honest effort to understand where they're coming from and what their positions really are. Altemeyer does this, and cross-references the commentary to his (IMHO) masterpiece, The Authoritarians, which is free, online, and also well worth perusing in its entirety if you have some free time.

The commentary is 15 pages long, but Altemeyer writes pretty well, so it's a painless read.

Excerpt from the section "Are Tea Partiers Ordinary Citizens? Three Recent Polls":
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A nationwide Quinnipiac Poll of 1907 registered voters released on March 24, 2010 reported that 13 percent of its sample said they were part of the Tea Party movement. Another nationwide poll of 3,000 registered voters, released eight days later by the Winston Group, pegged the figure at 17 percent. So only a small percentage of potential voters are Tea Partiers. However, 15 percent of the registered voters in the United States amount to 25 million citizens. And they are very active and committed individuals in a nation where a solid majority of the citizens are not. And additional millions support them even if they do not identify with the movement themselves. To put this in perspective, only 81 million people voted in the 2006 mid-term election.

Like the student radicals and hippies who joined forces to demonstrate against the war in Vietnam, the Tea Party is composed of disparate groups united more by what they are against (President Obama and Democrats) than what they are for. The public sees them as ordinary people, and Tea Party organizations insist their members are a cross-section of American adults, a nonpartisan mix of Democrats, Independents and Republicans. But the Quinnipiac poll found that 74 percent of the Tea Partiers were Republicans, or Republican-leaning Independents. Seventy-two percent had a favorable view of Sarah Palin, while the sample as a whole disliked her by a 2-1 margin. They were a little less educated than most, more female than male, older (most were over 50), and overwhelmingly white (88 percent).

The Winston Group results generally reinforced and expanded on these Quinnipiac demographics. Eighty-five percent of that batch of Tea Partiers said they were Republicans (57 percent) or Independents (28 percent). Sixty-five percent said they were “conservatives,” about twice the national average. This time males outnumbered females. Most of them again were over 50. Data were apparently not collected on education or race. Tea Partiers proved much more likely than most people to watch Fox News.

The Winston survey dug into what matters to Tea Party members. The most common theme was a conservative economic philosophy. Their top priority, like the rest of the sample, was job creation. But they thought the way to create jobs was mainly to cut taxes on small businesses and increase development of energy resources. Also like the sample as a whole, getting unemployment rates down to 5 percent was more important to Tea Partiers than balancing the budget. But in general they abhorred deficit spending. Ninety-five percent believed the Democrats were taxing and spending too much. Eighty-seven percent said the stimulus package was not working. Eighty-two percent opposed the Democrats‟ health care plan. Eighty-one percent disapproved of Obama‟s performance as president; and 81 percent had an unfavorable view of Congressional Democrats. So Tea Party members were most united in what they were against: the Democratic Party.
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Comment on the Tea Party Movement

From his concluding section "What will the future bring?":
Most Americans do not like radicals of any stripe, they want gifted people running the government, and they will turn on liars once they discover the lies. Thus Sarah Palin hurt the GOP ticket in 2008. But in the short run, meaning this year of 2010, I see a great danger. The rock-solid Republican base has been recharged and augmented. It will bust a gut to send as many radical social/economic conservatives to Congress as possible. While the Tea Party movement is opposed by a significant part of the population, the rest of the electorate is up for grabs. And not many people understand who is controlling the Tea Party movement, who is in it, and what they will do if they come to power.

the tea baggers and the activists of the 60's. The tea baggers are only working together until one group gets in the way of another, then they will begin fighting among themselves, its already starting to happen, whereas the activists of the 60's came together to achieve their goals and because they realized they were stronger united, then separated.

the long-term splits between various groups that had forged short-term alliances in the 60s are part of the societal schizophrenia we have today. I have to wonder how many of today's tea party activists were wearing love beads 40 years ago, now lost souls looking for something to bring them back to a sense of purpose they lost long ago.

It's debatable whether the various alliances of 60s activists really achieved any lasting change. In 10 years, we'll probably be saying the same about the tea party.