A new Pew survey finds this:
In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the movement has risen significantly since it powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections; almost as many people disagree with it as agree with it.
… The number of people who disagree with the Tea Party has also risen among the general public, according to the most recent of the polls in the Pew analysis, taken this month. Among the public, 27 percent said they disagreed with the Tea Party and 20 percent said they agreed — a reversal from a year ago, when 27 percent agreed and 22 percent disagreed.
In Tea Party districts, 23 percent of people now disagree with the Tea Party, while 25 percent agree. A year ago, 18 percent of people in those districts disagreed with the Tea Party, and 33 percent agreed.
In another poll in the Pew analysis, conducted in October, 48 percent of people in Tea Party districts said they had a negative view of the Republican Party, while 41 percent said they had a favorable view. The favorable rating had dropped 14 percentage points since March.
That drop was steeper than it was among the general public, where the percentage of people with a favorable opinion of the Republican Party had fallen to 36 percent, from 42 percent in March.
This comports with what we’ve seen anecdotally in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida where Tea-affiliated governors have faced strong backlashes for their assorted idiocies. The more people are exposed to Tea Party ideology and tactics, and what that actually means for their lives, the less they like it.
And where, in the last three months, has that exposure been brightest? Certainly August’s debt ceiling fiasco opened a lot of eyes. But at least as corrosive, and over a much longer term, has been the sustained buffoonery of the Republican presidential candidates and pseudo-candidates who’ve rushed to wear the Tea Party mantle: Trump, Palin, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Gingrich. The more they talk, the more people even in heavily Republican districts are repulsed. Unlike the 2008 Democratic primary season – in which a fairly strong field of candidates, headed by Obama and Hillary Clinton, strengthened the Democratic brand – the Republican campaign so far is not helping the GOP. The entire field is catering to a base that is increasingly disliked by everyone else – including other Republicans.
This is why there will be no populist insurgency in 2012 challenging the rule of the GOP’s money people. This is why Mitt Romney will be the presumptive nominee by February. In the minds of the people that matter, he already is, and the only force within the GOP that could challenge him has peaked and is losing its power.
Of course, there has always been and will continue to be a populist right wing within the GOP, and it will keep making noise in the presidential and congressional races next year. But it’s hard to see a path where the kind of negatives the Tea Party is now racking up even in Republican base districts can be reversed to the point where, as in 2010, GOP incumbents and favored nominees are being toppled en masse.
The question at this point is: where do 2010’s Tea Party supporters go? Not many will go to Obama in 2012, but will they reconcile themselves to Willard, or turn away in disgust at the whole process? And what will the impact be on volunteer enthusiasm and grass roots donations? On downticket races?
Votes are up for grabs. This would be a good time to have a Democratic party leadership that is willing to contest everywhere, including heavily Republican states and districts. The Obama campaign did that beautifully in 2008. In 2010 Congressional races, it didn’t happen so much, and the slate of Democratic Congressional challengers in 2012 still has some major gaps.
There is still going to be a hugely funded effort in 2012 to paint Barack Obama, and by extension his party, as evil incarnate. But don’t confuse it with the Tea Party. That’s over.
