The Tea Party and Climate Change

[bobalot]

This is from an article from the Economist. It's apart of ongoing research by Yale University which has been tracking the American people's opinion to climate change.



It's the answer to the last question which is staggering to me.

If you read the actual paper, it has this howler on page 6:

Democrats are more likely to believe that human beings evolved from earlier species of
animals (62%), compared to Independents (57%), Republicans (51%), and Tea Party
members (34%).

[Korto]

No, you're not reading the last question right. It asks "How much MORE information do you feel you need?" The Tea Party, according to the question above "How informed do you feel...?" already believe that they are the most informed (30% "Very Informed", God help us all), and therefore they don't believe they need any additional information to render a decision.

[bobalot]

No, you're not reading the last question right. It asks "How much MORE information do you feel you need?" The Tea Party, according to the question above "How informed do you feel...?" already believe that they are the most informed (30% "Very Informed", God help us all), and therefore they don't believe they need any additional information to render a decision.

Yeah, I just realised that and was editing my post just as you posted that. That's honestly just as bad.

[Korto]

Worse, in its way. If someone says "This is my opinion" but freely admits they don't know much about it, they're much more open to changing their opinion than someone who crosses their arms and says "I already know all I need to know, I'm not listening to any more".

There's no Global Warming, this I know
Because Fox News, tells me so

[Thanas]

This is not really surprising - studies have already shown the Tea Party is basically composed of right-wing Republicans. So really, no surprise there.

[Archaic`]

I'm less surprised about the amount of climate change deniers affiliated with the Tea Party, and more surprised that such a significant proportion of Tea Party members (30%+) actually do accept global warming.

[Simon_Jester]

The Tea Party aren't just "super-Republican Republicans." They're a grab bag of people who have different issues about which they care intensely. The most common one is an absolute ironclad faith in tax cuts and rugged individualism as a way to improve the American economy.

But there really isn't anything stopping them from thinking a wide range of things about global warming.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

You can also believe in global warming without believing in anthropogenic global warming. Many of that 30% could believe the Earth is warming but just due to changes in solar activity or something like that.

[wautd]

This is not really surprising - studies have already shown the Tea Party is basically composed of right-wing Republicans. So really, no surprise there.

I was actually expecting worse.

[Aufbruch]

I'm actually impressed by the Republican numbers on this one. Good for you, Elephants!

[Anguirus]

^ Don't be. To get a reasonable view of Republicans, you would need to combine the "Republican" and "Tea Party" datasets.

The Tea Party is not a coherent, self-contained political force. They are Republicans with an even more absolutist mindset, wrapped up in a mythos of having just sprung into being to save the country. What did Tea Partiers do before the Tea Party? Vote Republican. What do they do now? Vote Republican.

[CaptHawkeye]

I love the statistic that shows an overwhelming number of Tea Partiers don't want to learn anything else about Global Warming. Ignorance is bliss, and retarded.

[wautd]

Today I've read that more americans believe that global warming is occuring. I think it was about a 10% increase (democrats and republicans alike), but then again it kind of makes sense because it takes a delusional person to ignore the extreme droughts, storms, floods,... that hit the US the last few years.
The same article also mentioned that all (but one) of the republican candidates still think it's all a joke or hoax, but because each GOP debate is about who's the better Tea-bagger it's not that surprising. I just wonder which of the candidates are retarted, and which of them are puppets from Big Oil and the likes.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

The Tea Party aren't just "super-Republican Republicans." They're a grab bag of people who have different issues about which they care intensely. The most common one is an absolute ironclad faith in tax cuts and rugged individualism as a way to improve the American economy.

Eh, not tax cuts per se but spending cuts (at least half of the Tea Party wants us to stop our overseas military adventurism).

[CaptHawkeye]

They want *both* tax cuts and spending cuts. Something which isn't possible as long as they want the government to exist in any relevant form. I seriously doubt more than half of them would want to end US Military presence throughout the world either.

[Lord Baal]

I have to ask, what's the tea party? I know about republicans and democrats, but what are this tea guys about? Aside for being apparently educated on my third world scholar system?

[Simon_Jester]

"Tea Party" is a self-adopted shorthand for the far right wing of the Republican Party, whose views are more uncompromising and who often advocate more extreme versions of a given position than other Republicans. Virtually all members of the "Tea Party" are registered Republicans who vote Republican in elections; this is simply a label for them, one that is needed in light of the many rallies, meetings, and specific political candidates who have run on an even-more-right-wing Republican belief system.

The Tea Party is particularly hardcore on its form of economic libertarianism and on making government as small and irrelevant to the lives of the American people as possible. Tax increases are anathema, welfare programs of any kind are viewed very unfavorably as 'communism,' and it goes without saying that the way to make the economy recover is to remove corporate regulations and stop taxing profits...

[sigh]

[Lord Baal]

"far right wing of the Republican Party, whose views are more uncompromising and who often advocate more extreme versions of a given position than other Republicans."

That will give me nightmares, and also explain all. Thanks Mr. Jester.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

They want *both* tax cuts and spending cuts. Something which isn't possible as long as they want the government to exist in any relevant form. I seriously doubt more than half of them would want to end US Military presence throughout the world either.

Spending cuts have been the major focus. Remember, the Tea Party in its modern form began with the Dec. 16th, 2007 Ron Paul Tea Party Money Bomb. It did not, in point of fact, start with the 2009 Santelli CNBC rant. The Iraq War was a major point and the overseas empire is where Dr. Paul has repeatedly, for 2 election cycles now, focused on where he wants to cut the major spending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZmIzEMUN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGB8BeUWtwA

The Tea Party is now recognized as being split between the Ron Paul wing and what are often called the Tea-o-Cons (Kochtopus-backed NeoCon candidates like Palin, now Perry and others with mouthpieces like Glen Beck). As of the latest polling, Dr. Paul pulls about 60% of the self-proclaimed Tea Party.

[Lord Baal]

Another question, they call themselves the Tea party? After the guys that dump the tea into the river or they are called the tea party as a pejorative? Since I can't get myself around the idea of the tea party as a serious name, all I can imagine is a bunch of old retarded rednecks in some ones back yard having a imaginary tea party dressed with pink little girl dresses scheming while drinking the imaginary beverage. Either that or an auditorium filled of Cheney's and Palpatine's replicas.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

Another question, they call themselves the Tea party?

Some do, some don't. Like anything, the Tea Party in its modern form is hardly monolithic. Yes, its mostly the newcomers that are the Koch-backed twits. You have to actually dig beneath the surface and beyond the general noise generated by the media to get the facts.

Either that or an auditorium filled of Cheney's and Palpatine's replicas.

I take it you didn't see/hear about Rumsfeld & Cheney being labeled war criminals at the 2011 CPAC by vocal Ron Paul supporters? I think you have bought into a bit of propaganda concerning the Tea Party movement. Now, having said that, yea, I can see Palpatine Clones lined up who claim Tea Party cred: Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio and the other plastic candidates and their followers.

[Raw Shark]

Another question, they call themselves the Tea party? After the guys that dump the tea into the river or they are called the tea party as a pejorative?

It's meant to both evoke the Boston Tea Party (which involved Boston Harbor, not a river, which even then really didn't need any more bullshit thrown into it), and also to serve as an acronym for "Taxed Enough Already." The pejorative form is usually "Teabaggers," which refers to, "Teabagging," the act of putting your balls in somebody's mouth (or sometimes more generally on their face), usually with a dipping motion from whence, along with the shape of the scrotum, the term derives.

[Simon_Jester]

They want *both* tax cuts and spending cuts. Something which isn't possible as long as they want the government to exist in any relevant form. I seriously doubt more than half of them would want to end US Military presence throughout the world either.

Spending cuts have been the major focus. Remember, the Tea Party in its modern form began with the Dec. 16th, 2007 Ron Paul Tea Party Money Bomb. It did not, in point of fact, start with the 2009 Santelli CNBC rant. The Iraq War was a major point and the overseas empire is where Dr. Paul has repeatedly, for 2 election cycles now, focused on where he wants to cut the major spending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZmIzEMUN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGB8BeUWtwA

The Tea Party is now recognized as being split between the Ron Paul wing and what are often called the Tea-o-Cons (Kochtopus-backed NeoCon candidates like Palin, now Perry and others with mouthpieces like Glen Beck). As of the latest polling, Dr. Paul pulls about 60% of the self-proclaimed Tea Party.

Fair enough- but from outside and from a distance, the two groups blur together at the edges. The Kochtopus (I like that, something we can agree on at least ) wing winds up becoming the public face of the movement, and while they may not draw a lot of people who call themselves the Tea Party, they do draw a lot of the demographic that outsiders know in those terms.

My generalization could be rewritten as follows:

When people here speak of the Tea Party, they are often speaking imprecisely, but in general mean anyone who is 'more Republican than the Republicans:' who believes that what is wrong with the country is that the things the Republican Party says should be done with the country aren't happening hard enough. That we need more tax cuts, or more spending cuts, or both, that we need less regulation of industry and more restrictions on lawsuits, that we need less welfare than the current status quo of "food stamps and Medicaid," and so on, and so on.

Not every person in this category believes all those things. But in general the Tea Party is the distillation and concentration and intense expression of all the small-government, laissez-faire thinking which has been washing around the Republican Party for years, allied and combined with the fraction of self-proclaimed libertarians who did not themselves vote Republican.

Another question, they call themselves the Tea party? After the guys that dump the tea into the river or they are called the tea party as a pejorative?

The former. It's meant to invoke the American revolution, with the IRS cast as the British garrison occupying Boston.

In practice, the movement is so strongly coopted by corporatists that I don't expect to see the corporatist 'Kochtopus' faction rooted out any time soon. Nor do I expect to see them actually diverge from the Republican Party, rather than simply remaining within the party and egging the Republicans to go farther right on economic policy issues.

[BrooklynRedLeg]

Fair enough- but from outside and from a distance, the two groups blur together at the edges. The Kochtopus (I like that, something we can agree on at least ) wing winds up becoming the public face of the movement, and while they may not draw a lot of people who call themselves the Tea Party, they do draw a lot of the demographic that outsiders know in those terms.

Yes, I can understand that. Some of that is caused by the media's obsessive 'controversy sells' attitude that their Corporate bosses love. Some of it is caused by simple reinforcement of negative stereotypes people have (knee jerk reactions against something because its perceived as foreign/different). Some of it is also caused by either jackass monkeywrenchers/trolls (paid or not) or simply ignorant doofuses that show up to Tea Party events and spout their brand of nonsense.

Some of it is also caused by the fact that Dr. Paul does not give soundbyte answers. When he says that regulations hurt the economy, at least a large hunk of an audience will roll their eyes and tune him out without listening to what he says. He says things that are considered radical by many and that in of itself turns them off. Sometimes, though, it gets the dialogue started.

When people here speak of the Tea Party, they are often speaking imprecisely, but in general mean anyone who is 'more Republican than the Republicans:' who believes that what is wrong with the country is that the things the Republican Party says should be done with the country aren't happening hard enough. That we need more tax cuts, or more spending cuts, or both, that we need less regulation of industry and more restrictions on lawsuits, that we need less welfare than the current status quo of "food stamps and Medicaid," and so on, and so on.

Fair enough. Sadly, the people that spout many (though not all) of these ideas are the ones the media gloms onto and covers as being 'the real Tea Party'. Most that I know that want to end 'welfare' generally mean 'start with the billions given to foreign nations and Corporations first. Reform social welfare and help the system to get people off its dole'. Rarely do people that I know advocate chopping people off at the knees who are behind the 8-ball economically.

But in general the Tea Party is the distillation and concentration and intense expression of all the small-government, laissez-faire thinking which has been washing around the Republican Party for years, allied and combined with the fraction of self-proclaimed libertarians who did not themselves vote Republican.

For the Ron Paul people, laissez-faire is usually, though not always, a given. Dr. Paul has a pretty broad base of support: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Anarchists, Libertarians, Greens etc. For the Kochtopus half, not even a chance. They can say laissez-faire, probably even spell it, but they mean Corporatism. These are people who probably do not know the difference between FA Hayek and John Maynard Keynes.

For the people I know, they really only consider that the Tea Party at the national level is made up of 3 politicians: Rep. Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash. The rest are about as reliable as a cup of warm spit to quench your thirst.

[Shinova]

and rugged individualism

Funny that all these "rugged individualists" are the most likely to blindly follow authority figures like fox news, their pastor, the republican party, etc.