Tea party Democrats do exist (polls show about 5-10% are Dems)

[pampango]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tea-party-democrats-do-exist/2011/07/05/gHQAjeadzH_story.html

Polling has never shown Democrats to be 20 percent of the tea party, as Bachmann claims, but it has shown there are a significant number of Democrats who claim to be part of the movement. Often, that number is somewhere around 10 percent. The Winston Group, a GOP polling firm, last year showed that 13 percent of tea partyers were Democrats; Gallup put the number at 15 percent. On the lower end, the number was 9 percent in a TargetPoint poll and just 4 percent in a CNN-Opinion Research poll.

Who are these tea party Democrats? Republican pollster Dan Hazelwood said that just as some Democrats moved to the GOP because of social issues in recent decades, some are now moving to the tea party because of fiscal issues.

“They have the same populist point of view of the rest of the tea party movement,” Hazelwood said. “Their ideal would be a Dennis Kucinich type who was anti-spending and for budget austerity. So they are people who are adrift on the left because of spending and on the right because of social issues.” Though there has been some intermingling between the two camps, the country has yet to see a formidable Democrat emerge as a tea party candidate.

In the 2010 election cycle, the Tea Party Express endorsed a “Blue Dog” Democrat, Rep. Walt Minnick of Idaho, in his unsuccessful reelection bid (Minnick wound up rejecting the endorsement). Former Democratic nominee Jack Davis ran on the “Tea Party” line in the recent New York special election but received just 9 percent of the vote. (Davis had run three times before as a Democrat and seemed to have a flexible ideology.) There was also a Democratic tea party supporter who ran a meagerly funded primary campaign against Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) in 2010, taking 15 percent of the vote.

I always wondered who the 5-10% of teabaggers who, in polls, say they are Democrats.

I can certainly see how Democratic populists would be feel cast "adrift" by the tea party on social issues, but they would have that much in agreement with the TP on fiscal issues.

[onehandle]

1. I think that's bullshit. I can see a blue dog brown nosing the teabaggers...

...to further their career. But even five or ten percent of teabaggers?

Either a lot of them are lying to make their klan look 'diverse' or there are a lot fewer 'teabaggers' than we know.

I still think that 2010 was won by a few thousand fanatics who won by getting to the polls while Obama voters stayed home to play games on Facebook and watch American Idol.

[Tunkamerica]

2. Maybe my grandma? Southern Democrat but, unfortunately because she's a great grandma,

intrinsically racist?

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Interesting how it is always Republican pollsters who notice these things. nt

[DebJ]

4. Ten percent of the tea partiers is a small enough number that

such self-identifying people are part of those who do not even know what a Democrat or a Republican is.............

[Recursion]

5. DU has completely missed the anti-corporate rhetoric of the Tea Party

It doesn't fit in the board's memebase so it gets ignored. That may be why this poll will feel hard to swallow.

[LynneSin]

7. And how many democrat candidates the the Tea Party endorse and/or elect in 2010

nuff said.

It's like minorities in the Tea Party - sure there are a few but the numbers are very very small.

[Erose999]

9. Please, tell us again about the brave stand the TeaBaggers are taking against corporate influence in

politics and against the growth of corporate welfare.

This oughtta be good... just let me get my popcorn.

[Recursion]

10. Well, here's Tea Party favorite Ron Paul complaining Obama is a corporatist:

http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-04-25/obama-is-a-corporatist/

Here's Reich pointing out some anti-corporatist positions taken by leading Tea Party figures:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578200086257706.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

(See? They don't like Immelt any more than we do)

In both cases they see the problem as the collusion between corporations and government. It's part of why the GOP is trying to dump the Tea Party now.

[Erose999]

15. The Reich peice is hardly indicative of a split between the T.P. and corporations. Remember that the

T-baggers are the ones who want to remove regulations from big business, slash taxes for corporations and millionaires, and privatize as many functions of gov't as possible.

Not to mention they all support Citizen's United and are all for allowing corporate money to taint America's electoral process.

The T-baggers are the corporations' useful idiots.

[Tunkamerica]

14. well, somebody sure missed something

[LWolf]

6. Dennis Kucinich is not an "anti-spending/budget austerity type."

To say the least.

That's a pretty twisted spin, that tries to meld the left with blue dogs to come up with a Democratic Tea Party profile.

[Recursion]

8. Kucinich is against a lot of spending and is a deficit hawk

He's a lot like Ron Paul in that he doesn't fit well into the Left/Right divide. Hell, he was pro-life until a few years ago, and last week he was in Syria calling Assad "beloved by his people".

[LWolf]

13. He's against war spending; that much is true.

And, of course, that's the spending that has blown up the deficit.

[arbusto_baboso]

11. And how many of those "Tea Party Democrats" actually vote for Democratic candidates?

Damn few of them, I'm guessing.

These are Republicans in all but name. Blue Dogs, if you will.

[get the red out]

12. Probably Red State democrats

Lots of people who I consider to be very far on the right, who nearly always vote republican, seem to be registered Democrats in some states. The religious right caught hold of them, or the no tax right, or they listen to Limbaugh and think being right-wing is the "manly" way to go but they never changed their party affiliation.