Meanwhile, the Bachmann-Perry-DeMint-Cantor style of goofy and strident tea partyism is poisoning the movement's own tea. In April 2010, when Armey began his Koch coup, only 18 percent of the public had an unfavorable view of the activists. That has now more than doubled. In an August 16 New York Times piece, independent analysts David Campbell and Robert Putnam report that the tea party ranks lower in popularity than all of the 23 other groups in the survey -- including Republicans, Democrats, and atheists!
The one group that gets similarly high negatives is the Christian right. That's significant, because the tea party that Armey has organized turns out now to be made up largely of longtime Republican partisans and the usual fundamentalist Christian political groups that want God running government -- a position that repels most Americans.
For progressives and true populists, our need is not to wring our hands about their movement, but to work more urgently than ever to expand our own. Koch-flavored tea is failing, but that doesn't mean we gain -- unless we take to the countryside, offering a genuine, anti-plutocratic, outsider alternative to the co-opted tea party, hopeless Republicans, and cowed Democrats.
Cross-posted from Hightower Lowdown(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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