Tea Party- hard core ignorant.

So, CBS and the New York Times polled themselves some people, focusing on people who self-identify as Tea Party activists.

Notable findings:

(1) Teabaggers are almost exclusively white- 95%, as opposed to 75% of Americans generally (including Hispanics as white, apparently).

(2) Economically, teabaggers are no more likely to be rich or poor than other Americans.

(3) Teabaggers are more concentrated in the South and West:

TEA PARTY IDENTIFICATION BY REGION

	All Americans	Tea Partiers
Northeast	23%	16%
South	32	37
Midwest	22	19
West	24	29

Interesting side note: the poll shows nearly a third of all Americans are Southerners now. That's... a bit frightening, quite frankly, considering how alive and well bigotry, deliberate ignorance, and hatred of expertise is down here.

Anyway, onward:

(4) Teabaggers are generally older than the average- 59% over 45, as opposed to 50% for all Americans.

(5) Teabaggers love Republicans (62% approval rate), and Republicans love Teabaggers (42% favorable, 2% unfavorable, 56% undecided). Teabaggers despise Democrats (9% approval), and the feeling is mutual (3% favorable, 47% unfavorable, 50% undecided). Independents who have actually heard of the teabaggers favor them by about two to one... but...

(6) Half of all Americans have heard little or nothing about the Tea Party movement at all. (And, considering the media push, especially by FOX News, this alone should be sufficient to throw the entire poll into question.) Furthermore, of the half of Americans who have heard of the Tea Party, 40% have no idea what the Tea Party's actual positions ARE. If you take the actual numbers and put them together, you end up with only 27% of Americans knowing both about the Tea Party movement and what it represents. (And 18% of Americans identify themselves as Tea Party supporters. THAT should keep you awake nights...)

(7) Out of the half of Americans who have heard of the Tea Party movement, over half have no opinion, positive or negative, about them. 26% favorable, 20% unfavorable.

Now for the true ignorance which defines the teabaggers:

(8) Teabaggers' opinion of Obama: 80% unfavorable. (Fair enough, on its face, but...)

(9) Whereas 41% of Americans as a whole blame Bush for the current bad economy, among Teabaggers Obama is more to blame, and Congress most of all:

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR FEDERAL DEFICIT?

	All Americans	Tea Partiers
Bush admin.	41%	16%
Obama admin.	7	19
Congress	24	33
All	10	15

(10) Nearly half of Teabaggers think Obama has already raised taxes; the other half think he's kept them the same. (Hint: about one-third of the Recovery Act- that's the 2009 emergency stimulus package to you- was tax cuts and credits.)

(11) More Teabaggers oppose increasing regulations on banks (48%) than support it (42%).

So, what we have here are generally people ignorant of the facts- or, more likely, who get their "facts" from FOX News and nowhere else.

I, for one, would be interested to see a couple of poll questions that were asked all the time in 2008 and the first part of 2009, but haven't been asked recently, and see how many Teabaggers answer yes:

"Do you believe Obama is a Muslim?" and

"Do you believe Obama is a born American citizen?"

If those questions didn't get high YES responses from the Teabaggers, I'd be very greatly surprised.