What's up with the Tea Party?

[Greenbeard]

Late last summer, David Campbell and Robert Putnam shared some of their social science research, findings that didn't square with the popular narrative about the Tea Party being a bunch of small government types focused like lasers on fiscal issues:

What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters.

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

Scoff! What a reaction this transparent liberal academic propaganda got from some of you folks!

Today, writing in Reason, Gene Healy (the VP of the libertarian Cato Institute) makes some interesting observations about the "surprising" Tea Party support for Rick Santorum:

The Tea Party movement was supposed to represent an end to this sort of moralistic Big Government conservatism. Animated by "fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets," as the Tea Party Patriots' credo put it, the movement had supposedly put social issues on the back burner to focus on the crisis of government growth.

At one time, Santorum seemed to share this view of the Tea Party -- and it troubled him. In that same talk in Harrisburg, he said, "I've got some real concerns about this movement within the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement to sort of refashion conservatism and I will vocally and publicly oppose it."

Santorum needn't have worried: In this year's contests, he's regularly drawn more support from Tea Party voters than Ron Paul, who has been described as the "intellectual godfather of the Tea Party movement."

Exit polls show Santorum beating Paul among self-described Tea Party supporters in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, trailing him only in independent-heavy New Hampshire and Nevada.

A recent Time magazine symposium asked leading thinkers on the Right, "What Is Conservatism?" Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist offered this answer: "Conservatives ask only one thing of the government. They wish to be left alone."

Tell that to Santorum, whose agenda rests on meddling with other people, sometimes with laws, sometimes with aircraft carrier groups.

"This idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do," Santorum complained to NPR in 2006, "that we shouldn't get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn't get involved in cultural issues ... that is not how traditional conservatives view the world."

That version of conservatism has a new standard bearer, and he's rising in the polls.

Odd. It's almost like Tea Partiers are looking for an über religious candidate who can abide--indeed, embrace--big government as long as it's serving his social conservative agenda. One might even believe they're attracted to the theocrat in the race because "they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006...and still are today," that "the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics," and that they "are more concerned about putting God in government" than fiscal policy or shrinking government.

Kudos, Campbell and Putnam. You got their number.

 

[percysunshine]

'What's up with the Tea Party? '

They are busy doing crystal meth. Expect an outbreak of aberent behavior soon.

 

[Full-Auto]

'What's up with the Tea Party? '

They are busy doing crystal meth. Expect an outbreak of aberent behavior soon.

The tea party is alive and well. They/we have untied for one purpose. Getting the financial house in order. Now the GOP just folded on spending. Why? Because they dont need the tea party for passage.

Please keep it real.