-> Crashing the tea party'
->
-> Buzz up!By TIM RUTTEN
-> Los Angeles Times
-> Published: Tuesday, Apr. 20, 2010
->
-> One of the things journalism teaches you over and over again is that nothing
-> ruins a good story quite like the facts.
->
-> Consider, for example, last week's renewal of the chattering classes'
-> infatuation with the "tea party" movement, timed to coincide with the
-> deadline to file federal income tax returns. The group is conventionally
-> portrayed as a burgeoning populist expression of discontent that sprouted
-> spontaneously from the grass-roots and cuts in new ways across sectional,
-> class and gender lines.
-> Reams of analysis have proceeded from those assumptions, but like a great
-> deal that's based on anecdotal reporting, it turns out to be wrong. To their
-> great credit, the New York Times and CBS undertook extensive, and expensive,
-> polling that provides the first reliable look at the tea party supporters.
-> Little that has been generally assumed survived the scrutiny.
->
-> As it turns out, fewer than one in five Americans
"supports" the tea party
-> movement in any respect, and just 4 percent of all adult Americans have
-> contributed to it or attended one of its events or both. (On any given day,
-> you probably could drum up twice as many people who think the Pentagon is
-> hiding dead aliens in Area 51.)
->
-> Of the 18 percent of all adults who expressed support for the tea party, the
-> overwhelming majority were white (89 percent), male (59 percent) Republicans
-> over age 45 (75 percent) and significantly more affluent and better educated
-> than the majority of Americans. One in five has an annual income greater
-> than $100,000, and 37 percent have advanced degrees. More than nine out of
-> 10 think President Obama is pushing the country into "socialism."
->
-> The survey also found that more than half of the tea party supporters say
-> "the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think
-> that the administration favors blacks over whites - compared with 11 percent
-> of the general public."
->
-> If all this is beginning to have a familiar ring, it's because you've met
-> these guys before: They're the "angry white males" we've
been reading about
-> since political strategist-turned-analyst Kevin Phillips first identified
-> them as an electoral presence during Richard Nixon's successful presidential
-> campaign in 1968.
->
-> They share many qualities with other Americans. For example, while 96
-> percent of tea party supporters say they disapprove of the current Congress,
-> 40 percent think their own representative does a good job, a sentiment
-> shared by 46 percent of all adults, 73 percent of whom disapprove of the
-> performance of Congress as a whole.
->
-> They aren't, however, implacable foes of "big government"
or even of taxes.
-> More than half (52 percent) told the pollsters they think their own
"income
-> taxes this year are fair," just 10 percent less than all American adults.
-> Moreover, a majority told follow-up interviewers that, though they wanted
-> "smaller government," they didn't want cuts in our largest
social programs,
-> Social Security and Medicare.
->
-> So much for the surge of a new anti-government populism.
->
-> What the movement really amounts to is old wine in new skins, a re-branding
-> of the old-fashioned angry white male in a camera-ready package tailored to
-> the demands of the 24-hour cable news cycle.

This is great.  I want the far left and its ilk to keep underestimating the
anger of the country, all the way up to election day.


Jeff

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