{"id":1226,"date":"2010-04-19T18:07:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T22:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2010-05-18T10:58:25","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T14:58:25","slug":"polling-the-tea-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/polling-the-tea-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Polling the Tea Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 428px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/07\/9.12_tea_party_in_DC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"418\" height=\"312\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">New York Times<\/span> and CBS News conducted phone interviews of persons who identify with the Tea Party movement.\u00a0 The full results, all 41 pages worth, can be viewed freely at <a href=\"http:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/nytdocs\/docs\/312\/312.pdf\">http:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/nytdocs\/docs\/312\/312.pdf<\/a>. <span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The results are fascinating, at least to a political scientist.\u00a0 The Tea Party identifiers believe deeply in free markets. <\/span>An  astonishing 92% say the administration of President Barack H. Obama is  moving America toward socialism.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They also are seriously concerned about the federal government&#8217;s deficits and debt.\u00a0 N<\/span>early all  (92%) claim they would prefer a smaller government that  provided fewer  services. (73% said they would be o.k. with cutting  Social Security,  Medicare, education, or defense to achieve this  smaller federal government.)<\/p>\n<p>They  appear to have a strong anti-redistribution streak&#8212;80% were against  taxing the very rich to pay for healthcare for the poor.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yet, they are not purely ideologues on government programs that benefit those who have worked and the elderly:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">62% of Tea Party respondents agree that &#8220;benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs of those programs for taxpayers;&#8221; and<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">59% approve government &#8220;requiring health insurance companies to cover anyone who applies for health insurance regardless of whether or not they have an existing medical condition or a prior illness.&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The poll appears to indicate many Tea Party identifiers have jaundiced views of both the poor and immigrants.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">73% said\u00a0 &#8220;providing government benefits to poor people encourages them to remain poor;&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">42% think legal immigration should be reduced; and<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">82% think illegal immigration is a &#8220;very serious&#8221; problem.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the whole, the Tea Party identifiers are not pleased with the federal government.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #000000;\">They are almost uniformly unhappy with Congress and the President:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">96% disapprove of the way that Congress is handling its job; and<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">73% think President Obama &#8220;does not understand  the needs and problems of people like [themselves]&#8221; and 75% think he  does not share &#8220;the values most Americans try to live by.&#8221;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Indeed, their dissatisfaction may be the glue that unites them&#8212;53% characterize themselves as angry, and 41% say they are dissatisfied.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In light of the socioeconomic details provided in the poll, it appears that Tea Party identifiers mostly are employed, lower-middle to upper- income persons, and often church-going Caucasians. (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonathan_Raban\">Jonathan Raban<\/a> provides a nice first-person take that substantiates this portrait of Tea Party identifiers as mostly regular Americans (not fringe extremists) in his article, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2010\/mar\/25\/at-the-tea-party\/\">At the Tea Party<\/a>,&#8221; in the March 25, 2010 issue of the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">New York Review of Books<\/span>.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But, there may be a sizable number of extremists or belligerents in the mix. Nearly one in four says violent action against the government might be justifiable. One wishes the poll further plumbed this issue to see how many thought violence was justified now, and under what circumstances rebellion was righteous.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the Tea Party identifiers might be likened to both the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barry_Goldwater\">Goldwaterites<\/a> and to the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Silent_majority\">great, silent majority<\/a>&#8221; who helped propel Richard M. Nixon to the presidency in 1968 and 1972.\u00a0 Of course, the obvious difference between them and the Tea Party is that the latter is anything but quiescent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times and CBS News conducted phone interviews of persons who identify with the Tea Party movement.\u00a0 The full results, all 41 pages worth, can be viewed freely at http:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/nytdocs\/docs\/312\/312.pdf. The results are fascinating, at least to a political scientist.\u00a0 The Tea Party identifiers believe deeply in free markets. An astonishing 92% say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[68,64],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-public-and-governance","tag-tea-party-movement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-jM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1309,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}