Sign of the Times
Others have probably written about this topic already, and I missed it because I was (until this morning) suffering from a severe case of holiday fog. In case you have also been a victim of said fog, David Brooks tosses a spotlight on the following in his column today.
The tea party movement is … now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.
The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent.
While the tea partiers will likely revel in those stats, they should note that, in the Rasmussen poll, undecided independents are trailing by only three points, a presumed statistical tie and potential spoiler in any election. Then again, as Brooks recognizes, the undecideds could just as easily break toward tea-party candidates, assuming one or more hypotheticals happen:
If there is a double-dip recession, a long period of stagnation, a fiscal crisis, a terrorist attack or some other major scandal or event, the country could demand total change, creating a vacuum that only the tea party movement and its inheritors would be in a position to fill.
Brooks clarifies that he is “not a fan” of the tea-party movement, but he believes it has “potential to shape the coming decade.”
7 Responses to “Sign of the Times”
All the Teabaggers need to do is put up some candidates and win some elections… Once they are in power and have to start making decisions that will create losers and winners, we will see how popular they really are…
My guess, not very…
Heh. You said Teabaggers. Heh, heh.
Just waiting for them to descend en masse to decry the very name they christened themselves with, before realizing it was one of those nasty HOMO-SEXUAL practices.
It's easy to support someone who is not in office. That's why Rush and bloggers are liked so much. Put them in office, they wouldn't last a week
the tea baggers are indeed a force to be reckoned with…
As non-predictive as generic candidate ballots have always been, Rasmussen must have way too much time on their hands to go this one worse with throwing in a generic candidate from a non-existent political party.
The tea party movement is more so an expression of voter frustration than a party of candidates for election. I'll bet $1,000 right now there isn't more than 3 or 4 actual candidates sourced from the tea party movement in 2010.
Where Skippy will get his comeuppance is how they will influence the campaign rhetoric from the establishment candidates. The liberals will have to learn a more effective campaign statement than simply “no more George Bush”. Combine that with 10% unemployment and maybe 40 isn't totally out of the question.
“The tea party movement is more so an expression of voter frustration than a party of candidates for election”
That has been obvious (if not to everyone on the Left, some of whom need help) from the beginning.
Let me lend David Brooks a clue .. Bernie Madoff .. not a single member of the “Tea Party” movement gave money to Bernie Madoff to invest. Now tell me who are the gullible ones ? Obviously “educated” doesn't mean “smart.”