If you hear a nearby rumble, don’t be worried. It’s just your local Teaparty caving in on itself. Normally these bozos couldn’t care less about losing support among apathetic centrists. But a new poll holds devastating numbers for the extremist yokels:
TPM — Forty-nine percent of the public view the Tea Party unfavorably, while 30 percent view the group favorably. A Pew poll in June found that 45 percent viewed the Tea Party unfavorably and 37 percent viewed it favorably.
The drop in favorability was steepest for liberal and moderate Republicans. Twenty-seven percent of liberal and moderate Republicans view the Tea Party favorably now, while 46 percent had a favorable opinion in June, a 19-point drop.
That second graf is the killer. I wouldn’t write them off, yet. It remains to be seen if their funding dries up, a few crazy libtard zillionaires have been fueling this crazy shit with stacks of flaming hundred dollar bills since 2009. But threatening Wall Street’s profits may well turn out to be a fatal political calculation, not just for the Teabaggers, but for the GOP as a whole.
They cannot survive as a national party with anything near that kind of drop among the previously loyal and reliable. We don’t have to regain the House in 2014 to send a crystal clear message that every incumbent and hopeful challenger reads loud and clear. It is in the nature of all political taxa to be utterly spineless. Just knocking out a few vulnerable seats, just coming close in a few gerrymandered districts, will serve to isolate the Teaparty politically in the House like a raging outbreak of bubonic plague down yonder in the village.
It’s a Republican bait-ball in the making. We can openly point this out, we can laugh and gloat, because these numbskulls are so far gone, so corrupt, so deeply suckled by the industry of wholesale wingnut denial, that they’re demanding more extremism and moaning about the lack of dedication to the latest losing scheme, presumably as a vanguard against future electoral setbacks?
Teaparty Nation — “Barack Obama demanded unconditional surrender from the Republican Party. He pretty much got it. The Republican Party has capitulated on the central issue of Obamacare. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner never wanted this fight. In true RINO fashion, they wanted to surrender early and often.
Does the media still have to pretend Cruz is some kind of fucking super-genius? He’s not, he’s just reckless and foolish, and we now know Ted Cruz is the single biggest PR disaster for the GOP since Hurricane Katrina. Joe McCarthy had a much longer run pulling from the same old bag of tricks. To say Cruz is over-rated is a kind understatement.
Yes, I’ve been reading the comments of the local tea-thugs in the San Antonio Express News.
All I’m seeing there is denial, posturing and their usual bullying of anyone who tries to explain things sensibly to them. I don’t think that they have yet learned that there is a real world outside of their bubble.
In other good news – Senator Cory Booker has beaten the tea bagger who was endorsed by the half-baked Alaskan.
The votes in Congress today remind me of those science fiction scenes in which the ship’s self-destruct sequence is finally deactivated.
I guess a 27% favorability rating is better than anything higher than that, but it’s still way too high for any system that expects to have some sort of long-term viability.
And that’s only if we up and had some sort of elections or something tomorrow – there is still way too much time for people to be distracted by bread and circuses (reality tv and… -I don’t have any ideas about the current equivalent for bread…), and for the right wing noise machines to gear up and spew off falsehoods about this nonsense.
I’m fairly certain that with the actions of the past few years; the U.S. has forfeit it’s continuing status as a superpower. Granted, momentum will carry us for a few decades, but it will probably take us about that long to figure out that momentum was the only thing carrying us, and it’s too late to do anything.
Unfortunately, the people harmed by this aren’t those who are dictating policy.
@lochaber: The “bread” in today’s bread and circuses would be Food Stamps. Unfortunately for the Anti-Reality Party, they voted to cut that.
I think you made a graf gaff =P
“Fatal calculation” for the GOP is almost certainly not going to happen — but if the Tea Party continues to flame out like this, it could easily be as bad for the Republican Party as the Dixiecrat debacle was for the Democratic Party. It is probably a far-too-optimistic proposition, but a decade or two of Democratic dominance is not inconceivable at this point… that’s kinda exciting!
There’s still a long way to fall though. As long as the bad guys can keep the internal cracks from growing too large, they’ll continue to bounce back. Which is why, by the way, that stuff like the Tea Party Nation passage you quote is so encouraging. By all means, teabaggers, you really need to fracture from the GOP! Please pretty please!
Not a hurricane. A hurricane derives its power from strong organization and travels along a specific, predictable path. Our Cuban-Canadian friend is more like a microburst, blowing highly destructive energy in all directions and then disappearing without a trace save for the damage left behind.
What’s up with the 13% of Democrats who have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party? Were they drunk when Pew called?
I’d like to know what’s up with the 21% of all Americans who apparently don’t have an opinion? I didn’t realize that many Americans lived under rocks.
eoraptor
Perhaps they’re terrified that their employers find out they have opinions. Pew Reaearch is probably a branch of the NSA in their minds