dailykos: Teabaggers are just embarrassed Republicans

[BurtWorm]

Same whine, new packaging:


http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/5iaw97fnC-w/-Teabaggers-are-just-embarrassed-Republicans

Over at 538, Tom Schaller asks Perot movement expert Ron Rapoport of William & Mary to compare the tea partiers of 2010 with the Perotistas of the 1990s:

The Perot movement is inherently different. It was formed around a candidate during a presidential election campaign. This explains the support by Perot supporters for a third party which tea partiers at present lack. The major difference is that Perot movement was a total rejection of both parties, while the tea party movement is a total rejection of only one party--the Democrats.

Whereas only 5% of tea party supporters said that they usually or always voted Democratic, fully one-thrid of Perot supporters had voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 and slightly more had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

In the New York Times survey, 54% of tea partiers rated the Republican Party favorably. Only 17% of Perot callers rated either party as “above average” or “outstanding” and 43% rated both parties as “below average,” or “poor” with 8% rating the Republicans as “above average” or “outstanding,” and 9% rating the Democrats as “outstanding” or “above average.” Sixty-nine percent rated the

Republicans as “below average” or “poor,” with 64% saying the same about Democrats.

The level of favorability among tea partiers for George W. Bush is extraordinarily high—far more than in the population as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of tea party supporters rate Bush favorably, and only 27% rate him unfavorably (for the sample as a whole the corresponding percentages are reversed 27% favorable, 58% unfavorable. On the other hand Perot supporters rated both Geroge H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton unfavorably, Bush moreso than Clinton.

Rapoport's analysis underscores the extent to which tea partiers are really just embarrassed Republicans. Actually, putting it that way is a bit of an oversimplification. I should say: tea partiers are really just embarrassed Republicans -- unless they think that the Republican Party is too liberal for them. But there's nobody in the tea party movement who thinks that the GOP is too conservative. And there's nobody who is angry at GOPers but not Dems.

Tea party sponsors like Fox have eagerly pushed the claim that teabagging is a bipartisan thing to do, but there's no real evidence to support that myth. Instead, we've got a bunch of conservatives who think that the best response to the failure of their ideas is to rebrand conservativism as tea partyism instead of Republicanism.

They'd be better off rethinking their ideas.

[emulatorloo]

1. Teabaggers are the John Birchers of today. Fringe, Birchers never got this kind of media coverage

That's a good article, I appreciate you posting it.

[BurtWorm]

5. There is one big difference: The Birchers were not necessarily Republicans

In fact they were vehemently opposed to Eisenhowerism and suspicious of Nixon, who had to work hard to convince them he was more like them and Goldwater than he was like Eisenhower. But Nixon was rare among Republicans. Most wanted to keep their distance. Even Goldwater had to tread carefully not to seem too much like a Bircher (or at least he was advised to).

Some of those guys were so extreme that they would have been more comfortable with a military dictatorship or monarchy than a democratic republic. This may be true of the Tea Partiers too, but the difference is that the Republican Party of today will go out of its way to say it supported dictatorship or monarchy if it thought doing so would keep that fringe as its fire-up base.

[JVS]

2. They're confusing Teabaggers with Libertarians.

Teabaggers are fucking shameless.

[OHdem10]

3. Another Irony: Supposedly the Republicans ( who appear on TV

and "quote" them ) are correct when they sau Teabaggers are
upset over Spending, taxes, etc. In other words the Teabaggers
want us to continue doing the same old Republiccan policies which put
us in this ditch. This is downright crazy.

[Mugweed]

4. I thought they were just MORE embarrassing Republicans.

As opposed to your standard, run of the mill embarrassing Republican.

[kentuck]

6. That is actually a big part of it..

"...we've got a bunch of conservatives who think that the best response to the failure of their ideas is to rebrand conservativism as tea partyism instead of Republicanism."



They'd be better off rethinking their ideas.

[BurtWorm]

9. What they're actually doing is forcefully preventing the GOP from rethinking its ideas.

Which is why they might be much more dangerous to the GOP than they are to anyone else.

[kentuck]

11. Bingo !

Absolutely right on!

[sadbear]

7. Same goes for self-identified Libertarians

Too ashamed to admit they're republicans.

[Mugweed]

8. I always defined a Libertarian as

a Republican who openly admits he/she likes hookers and drugs...as opposed to your regular Republican, who tries to keep that in the closet.

[malaise]

10. 100% correct n/t

[madinmaryland]

12. The teabaggers are not embarassed repubs. They are the 29%er's

who still supported Bush in the latter years of the administration. They are not, nor have they ever been democrats.

[kentuck]

13. See post #9 above.

I think it is pretty accurate.

[BurtWorm]

14. 21%-ers, I think.

In other words, they're Republicans who should be embarrassed but have no sense of shame.