Trends in the Tea Party

Faces_of_the_tea_party

So the Tea Party has been making noise for a while but up until now, no one has studied them or tried to figure out who they were. It turns out that my suspicions are more correct than I thought. The Tea Party is full of older white Americans who are angry about their level of influence waning. They see America changing and feel that it's their way or the highway.

The New York Times has some great stuff from a recent poll and some video blogging that highlights this. For those of you who don't like or trust statistics, I think the poll was conducted fairly well (I do this stuff professionally). What's more jarring is that when you look at the faces, not one of them is different. They're all older and white. Even their haircuts (across gender too) are similar!

When I read the poll article I'm more convinced that this is a group that dislikes the idea of helping anyone. I'm more convinced that there is some latent racism present. It's old thinking that deserves to go away. It's fear that tries to hide behind the Constitution (which they clearly don't understand) and name calling. It's sad really. 

After eight years in power we've all seen that the ideas the Right tried out didn't work. Their foreign policy, their economic policy, their environmental policy are all failures. They're responsible for the economic crisis we're in. It's time for a change. Even if you don't like Obama's policies, we need to do something else. The recent past was a disaster.