Poll Smoking with the Tea Party

[Lemur]

Interesting piece by some PoliSci poll smokers about the Tea Party's membership. They were conducting mass interviews with people before there was a tea party, so they've been able to correlate a lot of things that were unclear before, such as the main predictors for Tea Party membership. The whole piece is worth a read, but here are some highlights:

[W]e can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously — isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

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.

[Skullheadhq]

I would vote for them, looks good.

[Adrian II]

[...] 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.

I believe that more then a few of them brought, like, racist placards to meetings? Isn't that right Lemur? I guess this survey would explain why they did. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it rather quaint that the bearers of said placards were tolerated. You'd almost think there was a racist streak to the Tea Party, wouldn't you?

Nah, that couldn't be.

AII

[a completely inoffensive name]

I believe that more then a few of them brought, like, racist placards to meetings? Isn't that right Lemur? I guess this survey would explain why they did. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it rather quaint that the bearers of said placards were tolerated. You'd almost think there was a racist streak to the Tea Party, wouldn't you?

Nah, that couldn't be.

AII

Show me the evidence that they are racist! Head down to the precrime lab, and get Tom Cruse to provide the ball that says Tea Party=Racist. Otherwise this means nothing because I saw a liberal who said Bush was Hitler.

[Ronin]

Poll smoking with a bunch of tea baggers?
I´m gonna stay away from this one :D

[drone]

So essentially the Tea Party is the religious right portion of the old GOP? Those I've been waiting for the GOP to purge from their ranks? Talk about re-branding.

[Beskar]

Show me the evidence that they are racist! Head down to the precrime lab, and get Tom Cruse to provide the ball that says Tea Party=Racist. Otherwise this means nothing because I saw a liberal who said Bush was Hitler.

Wouldn't happen, Tom Cruise would need to leave the closet first before he could head out to Precrime HQ.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Hehehe, I see the liberal media is hard at work. The Tea Party isn't a political party, it's a state of mind. Tea partiers are racist? Tell me, how many liberals voted for Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court? How many liberals voted for Marco Rubio to the Senate? Why does Congresswoman Debbie Schultz keep attacking Congressman Allen West? Does she harbor rascist feelings toward black Republicans? Must be.

The ruling political class from both parties don't like their colleagues who claim to be of a "Tea Party" frame of mind. They don't "play along to get along". Aren't accepting the committe assignment bribes and pork barrel slush fund money to vote against their principles and values. Have been immune to threats of having their congressional districts gerrymandered out of existence or re-election funding withheld. They are voting according to the principles they campaigned on in accordance with their constituents' wishes, how quaint eh? The political elites and media pr firms fear that contagion of thought will spread. The Republicans wish to co-opt them, the Dems destroy.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Actually, there were never that many racist signs at Tea Party rallies and the Tea Party is just as likely to have persons of color involved as the GOP is in general. Some of the signs were, no doubt, carried about by racists who truly believe that there are substantive differences between races (genetics does not support this) and that one race is somehow superior to the others (no evidence supports this). Other such signs were carried by Left wing agent provacateurs so as to muck up the waters. Pretty standard tactic really, akin to planting hecklers at the other side's rallies. The Tea crowd didn't know how to stop it at first because they were so in love with their own "spontaneous grass roots" image. Political novices.

The Dems tend to acquire all the whack job lefties, hard core commies and eco-terrorists to their banner since they take a more overtly anti-corporate/pro union/pro government regulation stance. Right wing radio hosts hammer this theme constantly, in part because the more sober assessment -- that some of these ideas appeal to those of the majority of this political bent but that for the most part the do not want to reshape the USA into a new Soviet state -- doesn't sell as much ad copy.

The GOP tends to acquire all the whack job righties who want to bring back white supremacy, abolish government beyond the municipal level, or establish a theocracy since they take more of a family values/traditionalist/capitalist stance. Left wing TV hosts hammer this theme constantly because....it sells more ad copy.

Neither party would really attempt, or could even hope to pull off, the kind of sweeping changes and absolutist ideas that get so much media play -- and all of the real players know it. They're just willing to use it to shift things a few points their way whenever they can.

[PanzerJaeger]

I wish the authors had included some solid numbers, especially considering that their conclusions seem to clash with other polling on the subject. A chart... maybe a graph... would have been nice. It's difficult to opine on their analysis without such information.

[Adrian II]

I will never cease to be amazed that Americans have come to blame 'the media' for all their woes including yesterday's rain.

According to conservatives the media are all liberal, according to Noam Chomsky they are all right-wing. I guess they must be doing something right then. In fact I'm sure that they are. A paper like the New York Times for instance is the envy of many another nation.

However, nine out of ten Americans would rather see the grey lady fold today than tomorrow. They prefer to get their news from blawgs on da Interwebs where every moron can pose as a 'citizen journalist'. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since one million US kids drop out of high school every year and the average reading level of the rest isn't brilliant, to put it mildly. On top of that the blogosphere encourages tunnel vision, it narrows peoples' minds and intellectual scope and feeds radicalisation and bad manners instead of dialogue and respect.

I see such trends reflected in the tone and substance of political debates, not just in the US but just as well in my own country and in Europe generally, and it worries me. What a sorry state the West is in.

AII

[PanzerJaeger]

A paper like the New York Times for instance is the envy of many another nation.


AII

Envy of the world, huh? Maybe the world needs higher standards?

[Montmorency]

That happens with every major publication. Maybe we should just get rid of them all?

[Lemur]

A chart... maybe a graph... would have been nice. It's difficult to opine on their analysis without such information.

Yeah, their research appears to be unpublished at the moment. Here's a link to some of the work that went into the project, though, including their 2006 and 2007 surveys.

I don't think it's terribly useful to focus on IZ THE TEA PARTY A RACISTS, though. My take-away was that the majority of TP'ers are social conservative republicans, which helps make sense of their cognitive dissonance. They don't want smaller government so much as their government. No doubt a number of genuine small-government conservatives have aligned with them, but that ain't what the movement is about.

Elect a white Republican and they'll disappear from the scene. They weren't in the streets protesting Medicare D, two unfunded wars, or (most insane of all) wartime tax cuts. So obviously they are not about fiscal prudence.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Yeah, their research appears to be unpublished at the moment. Here's a link to some of the work that went into the project, though, including their 2006 and 2007 surveys.

I don't think it's terribly useful to focus on IZ THE TEA PARTY A RACISTS, though. My take-away was that the majority of TP'ers are social conservative republicans, which helps make sense of their cognitive dissonance. They don't want smaller government so much as their government. No doubt a number of genuine small-government conservatives have aligned with them, but that ain't what the movement is about.

Elect a white Republican and they'll disappear from the scene. They weren't in the streets protesting Medicare D, two unfunded wars, or (most insane of all) wartime tax cuts. So obviously they are not about fiscal prudence.

I really don't think the "white" adjective was needed. Are there a lot of social conservatives currently labeling themselves tea partyers? Virtual certainty. Are a portion of those social conservatives are bunyon-brains who would be happy with a quasi-theocratic republic? A few, sadly, and even a few is too many as such an attitude is pretty well the antithesis of what the founders wanted. The events you note were, in some ways, the CAUSES of the Tea party concept. Medicare D and the Bush43 "spend like a drunken sailor" approach to government earned much criticism and, I believe, laid the groundwork for the Tea Party's apparent success.

[Adrian II]

Envy of the world, huh? Maybe the world needs higher standards?

This is exactly what I was talking about. A break-down of common sense.

AII

[PanzerJaeger]

This is exactly what I was talking about. A break-down of common sense.

AII

Indeed, lowering journalistic standards to fit an affirmative action agenda is neither indicative of a news organization that operates with a particularly high level of common sense nor one deserving of any sort of reverential treatment.

[Louis VI the Fat]

A paper like the New York Times for instance is the envy of many another nation.

Not since they started to charge me to read more than a handful of articles each month.





Louis - too stingy to pay for information

[Adrian II]

Indeed, lowering journalistic standards to fit an affirmative action agenda is neither indicative of a news organization that operates with a particularly high level of common sense nor one deserving of any sort of reverential treatment.

Ah, the convenient world view (if you can call it that) of the bloggista. The blogosphere doesn't recognize anymore that people have ideas or opinions, nor that they make genuine mistakes. In the blogosphere everyone only has 'agendas'.

AII

[a completely inoffensive name]

Ah, the convenient world view (if you can call it that) of the bloggista. The blogosphere doesn't recognize anymore that people have ideas or opinions, nor that they make genuine mistakes. In the blogosphere everyone only has 'agendas'.

AII

Again you are trying to push your leftist agenda by defending the liberal media. I refuse to comprehend your point.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Not since they started to charge me to read more than a handful of articles each month.

Louis - too stingy to pay for information

Protip: Murdoch's paywal isn't a paywal in your garden variety text based browser (I recommend w3m, it's easy to use).
Protip 2: in most graphical browsers you can disable JavaScript and CSS. You don't need those to read some news article or opinion piece and in addition the “paywall” suddenly disappears.

[Adrian II]

Again you are trying to push your leftist agenda by defending the liberal media. I refuse to comprehend your point.

La la la

Seriously, this isn't off-topic. Criticism of media bias as a systemic problem has (1) shifted from the left to the right and (2) become a mainstream issue.

I'm also serious that the Interwebs have a tendency to isolate groups instead of bringing them together. Before you know it, you are engaging only with people with a similar outlook and affiliation as yourself. In the US it seems that after home schooling you now have a trend toward 'home newsing'. Traditional media are disappearing at a frightening rate in the US.

A bigoted religious minority with a serious terrorist streak that feeds itself on blogs is a serious problem. They have depicted Obama as a muslim, a foreigner and a traitor, they have used images of opponents with gun targets over their faces, there was a big TP rally in DC where opponents were shouted down as faggots and n******. All the hallmarks of radicalisation are there. It reminds me of the radicalisation of parts of the left in the late sixties and early seventies: a belief in romantic myths and irrational stances, coupled with delusions about 'liberating' violence.

AII

[Ronin]

interesting article that might shed some light into the mindset of the teabagger.

Never mind the top, avoid the bottom

Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution.

In keeping with the notion of “last-place aversion”, the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the “rich” but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves. Those not at risk of becoming the poorest did not seem to mind falling a notch in the distribution of income nearly as much. This idea is backed up by survey data from America collected by Pew, a polling company: those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.

[Vladimir]

I got one for you Lemur:

The Tea Party is like Al Qaeda.

Chew on that.

Edit: Oh wait. Don't chew on the teabag. Oh dear, I screwed that one up...

[Lemur]

[The Tea Party] reminds me of the radicalisation of parts of the left in the late sixties and early seventies: a belief in romantic myths and irrational stances, coupled with delusions about 'liberating' violence.

I've been struck by that similarity as well; in the late sixties and early seventies the left was seduced by the notion of transformative violence, much to their discredit. These days it feels as though that ... I don't know what to call it ... that heady let's burn it all down and re-make it in our image-ism has migrated to the right.

It was bad when it was leftists, and it's bad now that it's rightists. Good change is gradual, thoughtful, measured, and conservative (in the actual meaning of the word "conservative," not its current usage in US politics). Violent revolutions usually leave you in a much worse place than you started.

The Tea Party is like Al Qaeda.

Dunno, I think the Tea Party makes much better videos.

[Montmorency]

interesting article that might shed some light into the mindset of the teabagger.

Never mind the top, avoid the bottom

Got to love experimental psychology. <3

[PanzerJaeger]

Ah, the convenient world view (if you can call it that) of the bloggista. The blogosphere doesn't recognize anymore that people have ideas or opinions, nor that they make genuine mistakes. In the blogosphere everyone only has 'agendas'.

AII

Ah, you got me! I do read a number of blogs religiously. Here they are, in all their evil-opinion-warping splendor. I'll never drive a crappy GM product again after reading about their poor production standards.

Give me a break. I get my news mostly from Google these days because it offers such a variety of sources for the same stories. The only time I ever encounter political blogs is when I'm looking for old links to mainstream sources that have fallen out of Google News.

Jayson Blair was not a brilliant fraudster, and the incident was not a genuine mistake; it was the product of a dysfunctional - and yes, agenda driven - culture in the newsroom that originated from the highest levels of the organization. Blair was recognized as a poor and often fraudulent journalist long before he was given tenure at the Times, but he was promoted over and over again because of his race, not his skills.

Jayson Blair joined The New York Times summer internship program in June 1998 after a Times recruiter visited the University of Maryland where Blair was editor-in-chief of the school's independent student newspaper, The Diamondback.

According to Times staff, Blair was a promising and talented writer who had previously interned at The Boston Globe and at The Washington Post. Because of his performance as an intern over the first summer, the paper's editors asked him to return the following year.

Blair advanced quickly, not only because of his skill but, according to findings of an internal report commissioned after the incident by Times editors, because he may have become favored as part of a "star system" that advanced some reporters close to then-executive editor Howell Raines.

After four years in the internship program and as a junior reporter, where, at times, he made more mistakes than any other reporter in the paper's Metro section, Blair was given a full-time reporting position.

"He was given a regular tenured reporting job despite the misgivings of his immediate boss," the report said of Blair. "He was put on high-profile national assignments with his new supervising editors receiving no notice of the serious problems that had marked periods in his previous four years at the newspaper."

Blair's editor Jonathan Landman told the Siegal committee -- a committee of 25 staffers and three outside journalists led by assistant managing editor Allan Siegal -- he felt the fact that Blair was African-American played a large part in his initial promotion to full-time staffer.

"I think race was the decisive factor in his promotion," he said. "I thought then and I think now that it was the wrong decision."

After several more mistakes, poor evaluations and a period of leave during which Blair was said to be dealing with "personal problems," a memo sent by Landman, warned management "to stop Jayson from writing for The New York Times. Right now."

The memo resulted in a short suspension from deadline writing but failed to get Blair fired. In 2002, Blair was promoted to the national desk to cover the Washington, D.C.-area sniper shootings, according to the report released by the Siegal committee.

"The Blair thing was complicated but at its simplest, he worked for our Metro desk and they knew some of his problems and when he was transferred to the National desk, they weren't made aware," Siegal told the Online NewsHour.

Blair wrote 52 stories during the sniper attacks. In one instance, Fairfax County, Va., prosecutor Bob Horan claimed that 60 percent of a story written by Blair, in which he was quoted, was inaccurate.

Despite such accusations and a slew of corrections the paper was forced to make in the wake of his reporting, Blair continued to cover critical stories for the Times, moving from the sniper attacks to national coverage of the Iraq war.

"That national berth for sniper coverage enabled him to slide into military coverage of military families on the home front of the war in Iraq," the Siegel report said. "It was on the home front stories, in March and April 2003, that Blair committed the egregious plagiarism and fabrications that landed like a bomb on The New York Times."

A review of Blair's time on the National desk found that on many occasions when Blair should have been on assignment out-of-state, he was in fact e-mailing or speaking to his editors from his Brooklyn apartment or from another floor of The Times office building.

Howell Raines didn't even deny it.

Before opening the session to questions, Mr. Raines made a pre-emptive attempt to address whether Mr. Blair's race — he is black — had played a role in his being added last fall to the team covering the hunt for the snipers in the Washington area.

Only six months earlier, Mr. Blair, 27, had been found to be making so many serious errors as a reporter on the metropolitan staff that he had been informed that his job was in jeopardy.

"Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter," Mr. Raines said. "I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities."

"Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?" he added, a moment later. "Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes."

Is this reflective of your idea of an 'enviable', top quality news organization? Take those rose tinted glasses off, my friend.

Now, I read the Old Gray Lady quite a bit because their stories are featured so frequently in Google's news stream, and they are generally well researched, high quality pieces. However, I am very leery to heap undue adoration and "envy of the world" monikers on any news source, as they all have their own biases, blinders, and agendas. The poor journalistic standards, poor management, and out-of-step personal agendas that were put on display just a few years ago during the Blair incident make it especially difficult for me to swallow your conclusion. Spiegel, maybe?

[Adrian II]

Ah, you got me! I do read a number of blogs religiously. Here they are, in all their evil-opinion-warping splendor.

Oh, but those are part of the conspiracy, don't you know?

Seriously, the word 'agenda' is blog-speak, even if it's used outside the blogosphere as well. It suggests that your opponents have hidden plans, that they're politicking, maneuvering, manipulating. It precludes dialogue. Couple this notion with the moral absolutes and irrationality of religion and you have quite a combustive mix. My impression from afar is that this style doesn't go over well with the American public and they will probably be marginalised. But if and when they are consigned to the margin they may become even more dangerous. Here the parallel with the post-war radical left is instructive as well.

As for the NYT, of course you read a lot of their stuff because it's newsworthy, well-written and well-researched. They more or less publish a complete book everyday. The long and short of the Blair episode is that something like this is bound to happen in a big company, it doesn't outweigh the 118 Pulitzers they racked up and it also doesn't mean that we should be uncritical and overly deferential to the lady.

AII

[a completely inoffensive name]

Now, I read the Old Gray Lady quite a bit because their stories are featured so frequently in Google's news stream, and they are generally well researched, high quality pieces. However, I am very leery to heap undue adoration and "envy of the world" monikers on any news source, as they all have their own biases, blinders, and agendas. The poor journalistic standards, poor management, and out-of-step personal agendas that were put on display just a few years ago during the Blair incident make it especially difficult for me to swallow your conclusion. Spiegel, maybe?

So you say that NYT is for the most part a solid news company, but at the same time is constantly pushing an agenda with shoddy journalism and poor management. Hmmmmmm.

You know my car for the most part runs quite well and can drive along the I-5 all day when I need it to. But constantly the transmission breaks down, the engine blows up and all my oil leaks out throughout the day.

[Rhyfelwyr]

So you say that NYT is for the most part a solid news company, but at the same time is constantly pushing an agenda with shoddy journalism and poor management. Hmmmmmm.

You know my car for the most part runs quite well and can drive along the I-5 all day when I need it to. But constantly the transmission breaks down, the engine blows up and all my oil leaks out throughout the day.

You were a bit cheeky with the bold function, look after the second bolded bit and its in reference to a specific incident, while the first bit was "generally" speaking...