There seems to be a lot of news about the teabaggers lately, probably because today is their big protest day. A new survey of Tea Party supporters found they are older, whiter, more male and more likely to call themselves “angry” than other Americans. Their political beliefs aren’t even internally consistent:
Their responses are like the general public’s in many ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” Most send their children to public schools. A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, despite some conservative leaders urging a boycott.
They also aren’t fans of poor or black people:
The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Only 18% of Americans identified themselves as supporters of the tea party. I’ll bet you’re not surprised that they get their information from Fox News and think Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are news programs. The people they like are: George W. Bush (57%), Glenn Beck (59%) and Sarah Palin (66%), even though a plurality don’t think she’s qualified to be president. Just to emphasize how different teabaggers are from the general public, Glenn Beck has a 7% approval of the general public (a huge majority don’t know/have no opinion) although 78% of teabaggers think they represent the views of the mainstream.
Is Sarah Palin losing her luster? The Boston Tea Party rally headlined by Sarah Palin got only 10% of the expected turnout.
This was taken as crowds gathered, but MSNBC had a live shot as she was speaking and it was essentially the same. The Boston.com headline this morning said “10,000 Expected…” In the body of the article that estimate was reduced down to 3000 by the time I read it. MSNBC later put a “1000 attend Tea Party Rally in Boston” crawl under video about the story.
By teabagger math, this is actually 100,000 people.
Andrew Breitbart (fake ACORN sting video peddler) is now peddling a second fake video. He has a video he says “proves” that the teabaggers didn’t call some Congressmen by racial slurs. However, the video is actually from one hour after the incident
Now comes news that Breitbart is the liar – or at least the misleader. Video he’s been peddling to “prove” the congressmen were not called the N-word was actually after the slurs occurred. As a friend notes, “It’s like running video of the Twin Towers on 9/10 to prove 9/11 didn’t happen.” Of course the videos Breitbart peddled to claim ACORN helped a supposed pimp and prostitute set up a child-prostitution ring have also been found misleading, at best. The California Attorney General’s review said they were “severely edited” and in fact “showed no violation of the law.” New York authorities concluded the same thing.
AP has the full scoop.
A reconstruction of the events shows that the conservative challenges largely sprang from a mislabeled video that was shot later in the day.
Breitbart posted two columns on his Web site saying the claims were fabricated. Both led with a 48-second YouTube video showing Lewis, Carson, other Congressional Black Caucus members and staffers leaving the Capitol. Some of the group were videotaping the booing crowd.
Breitbart asked why the epithet was not captured by the black lawmakers’ cameras, and why nobody reacted as if they had heard the slur. He also questioned whether the epithets could have been shouted by liberals planted in the crowd.
But the 48-second video was shot as the group was leaving the Capitol — at least one hour after Lewis, D-Ga., and Carson walked to the Capitol, which is when they said the slurs were used.
Questioned about using a video on his Web site from the wrong moment, Breitbart stood by his claim that the lawmakers were lying.
“I’m not saying the video was conclusive proof,” he said.
Aren’t you glad that Breitbart has such a large media platform?