Tea partiers get no respect

— Aretha Franklin sang about it. Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictional character Ali G exalted it. Kids are supposed to show it. Members of the tea party movement don’t get any of it. Respect, that is.

And why should they? Tea partiers are assault-rifle-toting religious extremists, down and-out ignoramuses from the margins of society who’ve finally found a public outlet for their pent up rage against Hollywood, mandatory seatbelt laws and smart people. When Barack Obama talked about the bitter folks who cling to guns and religion on the campaign trail in 2008, he was describing the citizens of tea party nation, before it even existed.

Never mind all that blather about the Constitution and rights and a debt that threatens national security. What truly boils the tea party constituency is that a president of mixed race now resides in the White House. Those people with the temerity to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances are really just Klansmen-they’re always men-who’ve traded in their hoods for American Revolutionary garb.

Or maybe not.

Politicians and pundits have heaped all sorts of derision on tea party members over the past year. The sampling parodied above is of the decent sort. There’s plenty more that can’t be printed in a community-oriented newspaper. People always fear what they do not understand and attempt to marginalize what they cannot control.

But thanks to some recent polling, a less distorted image of the tea party movement is emerging. For starters, it’s not inordinately composed of angry white men. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 79 percent of tea party supporters are white-compared with 75 percent of the general population-and 45 percent are women.

Tea partiers aren’t all GOP stooges, either. The same poll also revealed that 49 percent of tea party supporters are Republican, 43 percent are independent and 8 percent are Democrat.

What do they want? Well, no one seems to have polled about cross burnings or racial purity tests. But a Winston Group poll found tea partiers united around two core issues: the economy/jobs and reducing the deficit.

In short, the profile of the tea party movement and the concerns of its members aren’t that much different from the American people as a whole. “Overall, this survey paints a picture of the tea party movement that encompasses a broad swath of the American middle class,” reads a statement from Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which conducted another tea party poll.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has actually taken the time to go to a tea party event and talk to tea party members, rather than rely on willful misrepresentations of them as hillbillies and racists. But those misrepresentations-based on a handful of incidents at thousands of events involving millions of people-rather than reflecting reality reveal the panicked hope that the tea party will simply disappear.

One year after it emerged on the political scene and despite all the derision and disrespect, the tea party movement is stronger, more focused and more politically mature. With Washington oblivious to its core concerns, there’s no reason to believe it won’t be just as vigorous a year from now-or, more important, come November 2nd.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 04/12/2010

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