[reaganaut1]

The Tea Parties make sense to me. I'll give the Times a little credit for letting them explain their views, but their editorial page (Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Charles Blow) will continually slander the Republican party and the Tea Party as inherently racist.

[pepsionice]

If you stand back and look at this...it’s more of a ‘movement’ than a ‘party’.

You’ve got a group of mostly independents, a fair number of Republicans tired of their party, and then a small number of Democrats who are flatly dissatisfies (note: in southern states...this group is larger than the media thinks).

They will end up influencing not only the senate and house elections in November...but they could also influence the state elections as well (meaning the census count and redrawing of districts will be influenced by the tea movement).

[Pollster1]

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll looks at the 18 percent of Americans who consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party movement.

The key point here is the exact wording of the question. Wording variations can swing this number from 18%, which is close to the lowest imaginable, up over 50%. Considering that everyone outside San Francisco, DC, NYC, and Hollywood knows several normal neighbors who are at least sympathetic to the Tea Party, it is no longer practical to pretend that this is a fringe movement. We'll pretend instead that it is a small movement and perhaps that while the Tea Party is "racist", at least it's subtle or unintended racism for some of them.

[Do Not Make Fun Of His Ears]

I believe social media and email are two of the most powerful tools we have in countering the lies and spin.

Please forward these links to anyone who has been lied to by the media and politicians about the Tea Party Movement.

(Which of course is everybody),

“The True Face of the Tea Partiers”

Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tarzantripes2#p/a/u/1/_Pm1k7MK850

Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tarzantripes2#p/a/u/0/NDQWkBcq3qw

[sasquatch]

From the Times website:

Several thousand random phone numbers were screened for Tea Party supporters and qualifying adults were interviewed as part of the April national poll, along with callbacks to Tea Party supporters from a February poll, yielding a total of 881 respondents. They were weighted to their proper proportion of the population (about 18 percent) as determined in the February and April surveys.

In other words, they designed the poll based on the results of a previous poll. My BS meter pegged.