Have you purchased gold coins or bars in the last twelve months?
5% of respondents answered Yes
Do you or anyone in your household own a gun?
31% of respondents answered Yes
Is anyone home right now? Do you generally lock your door? Do you own a large breed of dog?
Do Barack Obama’s policies are moving the country more toward socialism?92% of TPers say yes. But do they consider that a good thing or a bad thing?
Are the benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare worth the costs of those programs?62% of TPers say yes.
In general, is your opinion of the Republican Party favorable?
In general, is your opinion of the Democratic Party favorable?I'm not going to try to organize the numbers, just click through to find them, but my point is that the TPers seem more motivated by hatred of the Dems than love the Reps. Which is scary.
DU: but my point is that the TPers seem more motivated by hatred of the Dems than love the Reps. Which is scary.I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this. I thought the Tea Partiers had made this much clear.
I think 'teabagger' is about as funny as 'dumb-o-crats'
What if you came home from, say college, or your house on the opposite coast, and you discovered your mom was not at home because...she was at a Tea Bag gathering?
"Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, the group that organized the event, said, 'Political correctness led to 9/11. Political correctness led to Barack Hussein Obama. We have a full blown case of AIDS and we're the cure.'"Whoo-boy!
anniecat: I am just not understanding why they feel so strongly about something that does not affect them.
Solon and Thanks: If you're a liberal, don't you believe in plenty of things that don't directly benefit you? If you're straight and support gay marriage ... it's the same thing. A tea partier could use the same argument I quoted above to mock you. "Why do they support gay marriage if it doesn't affect them? Maybe they support gay marriage because they want to be gay!"My limited understanding of the muddled teabagger message is that they style themselves as boosters of capitalistic values: free markets, self-reliance, and hard work in the service of "enlightened self interest," i.e., selfishness.
I have finally dug through the giant pile of books on my nightstand to start reading Andrew Gelman’s extremely important examination of the realities behind the stereotypes Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. And the book was inspired by the media stereotype that conservatives are less wealthy and educated than liberals. Conservatives have very successfully pushed forward this narrative about the “liberal elite"---in their worldview, liberalism was invented by over-privileged white people and then foisted on the rest of the Democratic coalition, characterized as illiterate sheep. Gelman dives deep into the reasons why this narrative had any traction at all in the mainstream media. It wasn’t just malice, but it’s sort of complicated, so you should read the book. (It’s a quick, breezy read with LOTS of graphs. Seriously, there’s like two a page.) But the book definitively answers the perplexing question of our time, which is, “Why do poor people in red states vote against their economic interests?” The answer is, quite simply, they don’t. There is no paradox. To quote Gelman: “If poor people were a state, they would be ‘bluer’ even than Massachusetts; if rich people were a state, they would be as ‘red’ as Alabama, Kansas, the Dakotas, or Texas.”Right now the hunch I'm going with, based on the flood of data we've been getting about the tea partiers lately combined with my own pet theory about how some people just really like hierarchy, is that the modal tea partier is someone who thinks of himself as a medium-to-biggish fish, but who lives in a very small pond.
it's easy and popular to continue soaking the rich...but at what point do you stop?
For too long the ruling class have enjoyed an extended New Years Eve Party whilst we can only watch, faces pressed up against the glassposted by kirkaracha at 10:34 PM on April 15, 2010
The Housemartins say:
Don't try gate crashing a party full of bankers. Burn the house down.
"...taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years. 'The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous,' said Tax Policy Center co-director William Gale. 'The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand.' Nearly 47 percent of Americans will pay no federal income taxes for 2009 because either 'their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability.'"*posted by ericb at 7:46 AM on April 16, 2010 [1 favorite]
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posted by Thorzdad at 10:21 AM on April 15, 2010