Welcome to your Monday open thread. It’s Monday, so it’s back to the grind. What’s on your mind?
National surveys of the Tea Party have found that explicit racist sentiment is a strong component of the tea-party make up, in addition to economic conservatism and strong Republican partisanship. The April, 2010 New York Times/CBS News national survey of Tea Party supporters found that they are:
– More than twice as likely as the general public (25% vs 11%) to believe that “the policies of the Obama administration favor blacks over whites.”
– Half as likely as the general public (16% to 31%) to believe that “white people have a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society.”
– Almost twice as likely as the general public (52% to 28%) to believe that “too much has been made of the problems facing black people” in recent years.
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In a broad study of adults in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and California conducted between February and March, the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER) asked a number of questions about “racial resentment” — such as whether blacks don’t try hard enough or have gotten more than they deserve. Conservatives are 23 percent more likely to be racially resentful, and Republicans 15 percent more likely than Democrats. However, the institute found that this racial sentiment isn’t simply a byproduct of white conservativism:
[E]ven as we account for conservatism and partisanship, support for the Tea Party remains a valid predictor of racial resentment.
It is untrue, as political commentator Dave Weigel argues, that racism in the Tea Party is merely reflective of its conservatism. The WISER study found that compared to other conservatives, Tea Party supporters are:
– 25 percent more likely to have racial resentment.
– 27 percent more likely to support racial profiling.
– 28 percent more likely to support indefinite detention without charges.
The new campaigns against building mosques is part of this same isolationist, xenophobic rhetoric. Xenophobia may be big topic right now but apparently the California Prop 8 decision is getting barely a wimper from the usual suspects on the right.
When a federal judge in California last week ruled the state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, several political observers braced for a flood of Republican blasts on the issue that could end up resonating in campaigns nationally.
Instead, the anticipated GOP bang over the ban — known as Proposition 8 — amounted to little more than a whimper. There were angry columns and cries of protest from right-wing groups and conservative writers, but the majority of the Republican establishment kept on a bread-and-butter message — and party leaders are encouraging them not to stray.
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In California, the two leading GOP candidates — gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina — issued muted statements.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the day after the ruling, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who opposes gay marriage, said he thought it may come up in a “subliminal” way in campaigns and moved off the topic fairly quickly.
The national committees didn’t touch it in a real way — “I haven’t been following closely,” said one Washington GOP operative who works with one of the committees. Meanwhile Republican leaders made clear their strategy is staying on jobs.
Will we get a civil war between the social conservatives and the Tea Partiers. The social conservatives are being pretty much ignored right now.