Rassmussen Reports, the official Fox News source for conservatively biased polling, conducted an interesting survey over the weekend that asked:
“Some people have accused the Tea Party of acting like economic terrorists during the budget debates. Are members of the Tea Party economic terrorists?”
I suppose it depends on how you define “economic terrorists.” Would a party that advocates letting the nation default on their debt be considered terrorists? What about a party that asserts that an S&P downgrade would be a good thing (we’ve seen how that worked out)? What about a party that holds a nation hostage in order to force a political agenda down the throats of a populace that opposes the agenda?
Setting aside whether or not we should apply rhetoric like “terrorist” to political adversaries, the result of the poll was that nearly a third (29%) of respondents said that they do regard the Tea Party as terrorists. That’s an astonishing result. Fifty-five percent disagreed and 16% are undecided. That means that nearly half the country believe that the Tea Party are, or might be, terrorists. And remember, this is Rasmussen, the wing-nuttiest of all pollsters.
These results drive home the point I made when I wrote Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party? It is a discredited constituency that couldn’t fill the back room at an Applebys. Yet for some reason too many in the media and in Washington, including Democrats, take them seriously. That breakdown of mental acuity helped to sap trillions of dollars of wealth from asset markets in the past couple of weeks.
Additionally, the Rassmussen poll shows that…
“…a plurality (43%) of all voters think the Tea Party has made things worse of [sic] the country in the budget debates in Congress. Thirty-two percent (32%) say the Tea Party has made things better for America, and 14% say it’s had no impact. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.”
Again, this is Rasmussen! If a plurality of voters in a Rasmussen poll think that the Tea Party has made things worse, the real number must be a substantial majority. Consequently, any politician who throws in with the Tea Party is representing a phantom movement and contributing to the harm that these phony radicals are causing.
More likely, they are serving their AstroTurf masters at Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-funded frauds. A good percentage of the millions of dollars that it takes to produce the mirage that is the Tea Party is surely flowing into the campaign accounts of Republicans across the nation. But given the results of this poll, and virtually every other one on the subject, these greedy pols will soon regret their decision.
While the Tea Party people plus some other allied groups and individuals have been labeled “economic terrorists”, their desire to “kill the beast”, that is, to knock out much government structure, suggests that the term “anarchists” would be accurate. European and Russian history in the 19th and 20th centuries was replete with anarchists, so there’s plenty of precedent. History is repeating itself.
So, more than half of this country (57%) feel that the tea party has done nothing to impact our political discourse or improved it in anyway. That’s pretty pathetic… and coming from a polling company relentlessly used by Fox News as the standard bearer for legitimate polling. I guess once in a while you can find a needle in a haystack where they get something right.
I think the point is if this WAS done honestly by an organization that actually conducts polls, then it would be staggering. Rasmussen fixes the results by pre-calling people, asking their opinions and choosing to call back or not during their real polls. Perhaps this is the start of the right realizing what kind of parasite they allowed to latch onto them. They’ve already shown to be difficult with republican leadership when leadership feels they need solidarity, how long will it take?