By Peter Jamison in Media, Politics
Tue., Feb. 23 2010 @ 4:20PM
Those who pick up their news exclusively from such esteemed outlets as The Economist magazine, the Web site Politico, or ABC television could be forgiven these days for having a charitable view of the new American political force known as the Tea Party movement.
Earlier this month, Politico's Jonathan Martin, appearing as a commentator on ABC News, said the tea-partiers had "helped the
party." In a recent editorial, The Economist dubbed them "an alliance of ordinary people who are spooked by the huge amount of debt that is being racked up on Obama's watch."
We like both The Economist and Politico. But assertions such as these are tone-deaf, inside-the-Beltway punditry at its worst. They do the American people a profound disservice by failing to portray the Tea Party movement as what it is: A disturbing -- one might say downright spooky -- insurgency of the paranoid right-wing fringe. This isn't a snide liberal pronouncement. It's a verified sociological fact, as recent survey data from California make clear.
A Field Poll dated Jan. 26 represents the first systematic study of the ethnicity, political leanings, and beliefs of tea-partiers in the country's most diverse and populous state. The poll can be considered a fair snapshot of the movement on the eve of its arrival as a real force in American politics, and its results are plain.
Tea partiers are not, as they and their media patrons would have it, a diverse and independent-minded coalition of grassroots campaigners for governmental reform and deficit reduction. On the contrary: The movement is overwhelmingly white, conservative, and in love with laughable conspiracy theories. Consider:
* Among those who said they identified "a lot" with the Tea Party movement, only 29 percent said they believed Barack Obama was born in the United States. (This means that more than seven out of every 10 tea partiers subscribes to the bizarre and semi-literate "Birther" movement, which holds that Obama forged his birth certificate and is thus ineligible to be president.)
* Likewise, most of those who identified strongly as tea-partiers said they were "strongly conservative" (46 percent), compared with a small fraction who said they were "moderately conservative" (13 percent) and "middle-of-the-road" (5 percent). Let this put to rout the notion that the Tea Party movement is fueled by disenchanted voters from the political center.
* Tea Party ideology has virtually no appeal among ethnic minorities. Only 2.9 percent of black voters said they identified strongly with the movement, compared to 16.5 percent of whites. Among Latino voters, the number was 4.5 percent, while only 2.1 percent of Chinese and 4.8 percent of Vietnamese Americans identified "a lot" with tea-partiers.
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http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/02/tea_party_birther.php
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