Meet The New Boss...Same As The Old Boss

All is not well in the land of the Tea Party.

First, according to a recent New York Times poll, the tea party is the most unpopular it has been since they started polling on the tea party’s favorability in April of last year.

Secondly, according to data compiled by two researchers and published late in  2010, and recently updated for a paper back edition (American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us), the tea party ranks lowest in the 24 separate groups of Americans’ or individuals who they polled on. They are among the least popular groups of any kind of Americans in politics and culture right now. They have a lower favorability ranking than Sarah Palin, Democrats, Republicans, Atheist (God Bless Them), and Muslims – who were vilified for trying to build a community center in lower Manhattan.

The authors examine the role of the tea party in American politics and the data is painstakingly researched and brutally honest. For instance, when polled, Americans overwhelmingly stated that given a choice between a tea party president and Muslim president, they would prefer a Muslim president. Not a fake Muslim president, but an actual Muslim.

Wow.

Needless to say, the billionaire sugar daddies (Rupert Murdoch, David and Charles Koch, Dick Armye’s Freedom Works) that are bankrolling America’s so-called spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising have a public relations problem that threatens their self-interested and at times radical agendas.

The other fascinating thing that becomes clear from the data collected is the undeniable fact that the tea party, which is often billed as an non-partisan grass roots political movement, is actually nothing more than the same old republican base with a fresh coat of paint. In fact, past republican affiliation is the single greatest predictor of tea party support today. Also, next to being a republican, the second criteria for being a tea party cardholder is the desire to see religion play a prominent role in American politics.

Despite what Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck might have you think about the tea party express – the data collected shows that the tea party movement is not a bunch of independents that are upset with the growth of government, fighting the good fight, but actually, the same old religious, conservative wing of the Republican Party. 

The curtain has been drawn back and the wizard as been exposed.

Meet the New Boss…Same as the Old Boss.