{"id":6207,"date":"2012-01-17T11:09:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T19:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6207"},"modified":"2012-01-17T11:09:54","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T19:09:54","slug":"has-the-tea-party-gone-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6207","title":{"rendered":"Has The Tea Party Gone Cold?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An article today in The Hill has collected some evidence of the <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/campaign\/204439-once-hot-tea-party-goes-cold\" target=\"_blank\">fading influence<\/a> of the Tea Party. The author, Josh Lederman, leads off the column with the declarative statement that <em>&#8220;The Tea Party is falling to pieces.&#8221;<\/em> He then goes on to enumerate the reasons for that assessment, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s hard to imagine a GOP presidential candidate Tea Partiers could dislike more than Mitt Romney.<\/li>\n<li>Support for the Tea Party is ebbing across the country, according to a November 2011 study by the Pew Research Center.<\/li>\n<li>Headed by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), members of the House in 2010 formed a Tea Party caucus <em>[that]<\/em> has sat largely dormant.<\/li>\n<li>The Republican establishment [&#8230;] has discovered just how difficult it is to govern when a major part of its base places its allegiance elsewhere.<\/li>\n<li>There were more than 83,000 mentions of the Tea Party in the news media in 2010; that number dropped to 32,000 in 2011 (Also 970,000 Tea Party mentions in social media in 2011, compared to 8.5 million for Occupy Wall Street).<\/li>\n<li>In congressional races <em>[the Tea Party is]<\/em> struggling against establishment Republicans in 2012 primary races.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While all of that is true, I have just one little squabble with Lederman: <strong>There is no such thing as the Tea Party and there never has been!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are no Tea Party candidates; no Tea Party voters; no Tea Party committees; no Tea Party nominating conventions. Nothing. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that nearly all of those who associate themselves with the alleged Tea Party are Republicans. Every candidate that the Tea Party has supported is a Republican. And only Republicans ever bother to solicit Tea Party support. The Tea Party is merely a fringe faction of disgruntled Republicans elevated by GOP lobbyists and conservative media. It is telling that the Tea Party spokesperson quoted in the article was Sal Russo of the Tea Party Express (TPE). Russo runs the GOP PR firm that created TPE and once <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/print\/?\/news\/media\/roger-ailes-fox-news-2011-5\/\" target=\"_blank\">told New York Magazine<\/a> that <em>&#8220;There would not have been a tea party without Fox.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Other than that small omission, the Hill&#8217;s article was great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article today in The Hill has collected some evidence of the fading influence of the Tea Party. The author, Josh Lederman, leads off the column with the declarative statement that &#8220;The Tea Party is falling to pieces.&#8221; He then goes on to enumerate the reasons for that assessment, including: It&#8217;s hard to imagine a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[963,534],"class_list":["post-6207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-sal-russo","tag-tea-party"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-1C7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5108,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5108","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":0},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama And The Tea Party","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/5\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Once again, Fox Nation outright lies in a headline article. The arrogance of the Fox Nationalists is astonishing in that they will brazenly lie even while providing a link to the source data the exposes them as liars. Here we have Fox Nation headlining that President Obama is more unpopular\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9318,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9318","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":1},"title":"Question: Is The Tea Party Dead? Answer: It was Never Alive","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/20\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Weigel at Slate has done some fun sleuthing and discovered that the House Tea Party Caucus, launched by Michele Bachmann, is, if not dead, in critical condition and slipping away fast: Today, the membership page for the caucus is defunct. The caucus hasn't met since July 2012; it has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5510,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5510","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":2},"title":"The Difference Between #OccupyWallStreet And The #TeaParty","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/10\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As the \"Occupy\" movement continues to grow and expand across the country, some in the media have been trying to make comparisons between it and the Tea Party. In fairness, there are some similarities. Both are comprised of Americans who are angry about unfairness and corruption in politics and business.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10798,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10798","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":3},"title":"The Tea Party Is Over According To &#8211; Bill O&#8217;Reilly!","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/28\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The astroturf fraud known as the Tea Party was literally invented by a cabal of uber-rightist millionaires and corporations with interests in tobacco and oil. The prime movers were the Koch brothers, who transited from their father's John Birch Society to their own front groups, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1577,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1577","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":4},"title":"New Tea Party Survey Affirms Overt Partisanship","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/3\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In a story promoted by Fox Nation, they reference a \"survey\" that reveals conclusions that are diametrically opposed to what the Fox Nationalists assert. On the Fox Nation web site the story is headlined: New Tea Party Survey Destroys Media Myths. The story links to an article in the Washington\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2902,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=2902","url_meta":{"origin":6207,"position":5},"title":"Poll: Tea Party Is Wildly Out Of Touch With America","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/5\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A new poll (pdf) by the Public Religion Research Institute reveals what most conscious observers already knew: The views of the Tea Party are wholly removed from those of the rest of the American people. The differences between the Tea Party and everyone else are so stark that it should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Election&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6209,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6207\/revisions\/6209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}