From Denny: Three different polls declare theTea Party's popularity is rapidly running downhill. There is a backlash against this ultra conservative self-serving political movement.
CNN, The New York Times and CBS recorded an all time high unfavorable rating this past month for the Tea Party and its goals.
What the Tea Party did achieve is to wake up the Independent voters who rarely pay close attention to politics compared to loyalist Republicans and Democrats.
Independents are furious at the hard line against bipartisan compromise in Washington that conservative lawmakers have stubbornly held, without reason or sanity. Independents are considered the swing bloc of the electorate and when this bloc moves one direction or the other the politicians start paying attention to the winds of change.
The recent debt ceiling debacle brought the Independents into focus to pay attention to Washington contentiousness. They did not like what they saw.
Independents were unhappy with several items just like the rest of the country:
* How the conservatives threatened to force a national debt default, contentiously refusing to compromise on a common sense deal.
* Failure of President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to reach a deal to reduce the deficit.
* Seriously unhappy with how Standard & Poor's thought sharply rebuking the political system by lowering the country's risk rating was the answer, only to end up causing outrageous havoc in the financial markets around the world.
CNN poll:
* Unfavorable rating of the Tea Party grew from 37 percent in October 2010 to a big jump of 51 percent in August 2011.
The New York Times poll:
* Unpopular rating back in October 2010 was 26 percent. Now? In August 2011 it's shot up to 40 percent unpopular.
From Charles Franklin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and polling specialist: “If you were paying attention to the coverage, the characterization of people resistant to raising the debt ceiling was they were Tea Party supporters or members of the Tea Party caucus. That characterization is an element in the current apparent decline in Tea party popularity."
Independents are a fast-growing segment of the voting population as both mainstream parties continue to lose support.
What do Independents want? * They want the political parties to bridge their differences to solve the nation's problems. Independents did not see that happen on the debt ceiling mess. What they observed was a last minute unpopular compromise to avoid a national default that basically did not solve the long term problem.
From Charles Franklin: “What we saw in all the polling, and it’s very consistent, is people favored some sort of compromise and did not know why the deadlock was there. The Tea Party, in some eyes, was blamed for the deadlock.”
* They generally agree that federal deficits need to shrink.
* They want government to be more accountable to the voter.
* Independent voters are turned off by brinkmanship, instead, favoring immediate and sensible solutions to the nation's pressing issues.
From Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College: “They want a government that works together, a government that gets along. What they’re upset about is intransigence toward compromise. What came through to voters is they saw the Tea Party as a hindrance to compromise.”
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