Experts and academics to the Tea Party: Your reign looks like it's coming to an end

Ryan Streeter
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Watch out, Tea Party, according to The Hill today:

The reign of the Tea Party may be coming to an end in Washington, according to academic political experts who say polls show a backlash against the conservative movement.

The article continues:

These experts say independent voters who make up the swing bloc of the electorate typically pay less attention to politics than staunch Republican and Democratic voters. (emphasis added)

But then it says:

Many independents were not happy with what they saw over the last several weeks: a contentious debate in which conservatives threatened to force a national default; the failure of President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to reach a grand bargain to reduce the deficit; a sharp rebuke of the political system by Standard & Poor’s causing havoc on Wall Street. (emphasis added)

So independent voters who don't pay much attention to political events were upset with all those political events?

It seems the experts are reading into the results somewhat. The truth is that independents are what their name implies: independent. They have also downgraded Obama quite a bit lately, as well. They pay enough attention to the news to form opinions about events. The coverage of the debt deal, unless you watch Fox, repeatedly made the Tea Party out to be the obstructionists when the media could have just as easily portrayed Obama the same way. There was also quite a bit of coverage about growing dissatisfaction with Obama.

So it's no surprise that:

The CNN poll showed the Tea Party’s favorable/unfavorable rating grew from 37 percent in October of 2010 to 51 percent in August 2011.

But none of this suggests that the reign of the Tea Party is coming to an end. The "experts" once again seem to be reading the results in a way that supports their personal views.

The results, however, do suggest that the Tea Party needs to update its message. With an update, it can recapture the independent imagination as it did last year.

I've argued before that it's time for Tea Party 2.0 - a Tea Party that is just as passionate about entitlements and taxes as it was in 2010 about discretionary spending. If the movement really cares about Washington spending, then it needs to drive grassroots action on those issues - not just on spending.

Comments

[Comment Guy]

Where I live the Tea Parties are growing in leaps and bounds.

Harry Reid is trying to say also the Tea Party is so yesterday.

They throw every smear at them and then just try to dismiss them if that doesn't work.

Simply if the Tea Party was fading they wouldn't go out of their way to smear them so much.