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So who’s winning the Tea Party primary so far?
According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, 53 percent of respondents who said they expect to vote in the GOP presidential primary identified themselves as Tea Party supporters. Their favorite candidate right now: the former Arkansas governor who shot to prominence after winning over conservatives in Iowa in 2008.
Among Tea Party backers, 27 percent said Gov. Mike Huckabee would be their first choice among Republican candidates, with an additional 15 percent calling Huckabee their second choice.
Huckabee, who has sent mixed signals about how interested he may be in a White House run that would cut off a lucrative TV contract, had the support of about a quarter of GOP primary voters overall in the poll.
Presumed presidential candidate Mitt Romney fares less well among Tea Party types, with 14 percent calling the former Massachusetts governor their top choice for the nomination. (It’s worth noting that the same share of Tea Party supporters named former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – who enjoys broad support among conservatives but not always the perception of strong viability as a candidate – as their top choice.) Romney and Palin were the second choice of 17 percent and 19 percent of Tea Party fans, respectively.
Romney was the top choice among GOP primary voters who say they are NOT Tea Party supporters, with 32 percent of those voters saying he’s their preferred nominee.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the top choice of 19 percent of Tea Party backers, with another 8 percent calling him their second choice.
Gingrich, who’s the preferred nominee for about 13 percent of GOP primary voters overall according to the NBC/WSJ poll, unveiled a new website on Thursday that indicates he's planning to explore a presidential run.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who recently delivered the keynote speech at a meeting of the Tea Party Patriots and released a web video praising the movement, was the first or second choice of a combined 15 percent of Tea Party supporters. His overall support among all GOP primary voters was at just 3 percent in the survey.
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Every time I see an article about the potential GOP candidates, all I can hear in my head is circus music.
Huckabee is lying about Obama's background. And as a fundamental Christian he believes the earth is 6000 years old and that evolution is not a fact. And that man, in the 21st century, wants to be resposaible for national eduction policy. Good grief!
dear tim
the real question is how can you be a so-called christian and be such a bigot and a liar ??? huckabee and "newt" have no shame !!!
Bigots and liars often hide behind religion. It is their cowardly shield. Mike Huckabee sets an example of everything one should not be in the 21st century.
who cares ??? they're all a bunch of 'nit wits" !!! they remind me of the joke about polish immigrants !!! namely, how many poles does it take to change a light bulb ??? the answer being five !!! one to hold the bulb and four to turn the stool !!!
Tim Pawlenty is the way. I hope the Repubs get their act together and put him on the ballot..
I wasn't old enough to judge Regan but I think if he was alive he would say you all lost.
Cause why is this poetic bitch to the right of me? No, I stopped intelligence trash from experimenting on US citizens because less than violent is the most brutal way to go and now I see you set up covert military rule to cover it up.
@!$%#, ACLU, what the @!$%# just happened?
Who the @!$%# is Glen? How can he even have a following?
Why is this tool called NEWT using all my counter intel words in one streaming sentence to keep poet to the right of me?
Why is this counter intel program I scrubbed now a trailer on TV coming out next Friday?
The President's lawyers have been claiming their emergency power is now everywhere and forever but not a single @!$%#in person stoped to ask, "Hey, is it over the US too and what does that mean?"
For real, this @!$%# should be common knowledge because this is the very foundation between the government and we the people but even I had to stumble across this, and I have a vested interest and am always on the look out for information like this.
I am sorry but my country has utterly turned into a @!$%#in upside sadistic joke.
How can the @!$%#in defense secretary that invaded the wrong country at the expense of 100,000 civilian lives and 4000 soldiers just go on tv and say I am sorry but it is neutralized by calling you an east coast elitist.
I really think this left vs right football game back them had a truth dot somewhere close to the middle of the field but then the left's goal posts started to exponentially accelerate to keep up with the right making fun of it using a half ass third world counter intel script and my truth got fell far behind.
Now it is @!$%#in taboo to ask the simplest @!$%#in questions (even asking that will make us less safe!) and we dance around these rather sobering questions all day in a half human way because gutless is to scared of stupid and we all pay a very heavy price.
Like why the @!$%# is my wife's head a 24/7 transmitor for a @!$%#in intelligence service just so you can add a little to the control of someone three associations down from me? Not even human any more...
BOO Obama...
Gist of the article: The R's got nuthin.
Hucklebee has a hard time of telling the truth, which he calls mis-statements. Anybody that works for Fox can't be trusted at all. I am absolutely sick of these people who think they can do a better job at PRESIDENT, then fail all to hell. You get screwed for voting for them & they get the best of the perks lies can buy. He is no so religious, he sold his soul to FOX.
The Tea Party movement is not a set of well-defined ideas controlled by a single organization. It remains to a large extent organic, messy, and disorganized by modern political standards, in spite of the best efforts of the political establishment to control and co-opt it. The groundwork for many of the authentically "new" ideas discussed within the movement resides in a large body of serious political, economic, and social thought dating back to the 17th century and found in the writing of people like Locke, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Thomas Paine, and others. Not coincidentally, the founders were heavily influenced by these ideas.
In fact, contrary to many critics on both sides of the aisle who claim that much of the U.S. Constitution is obsolete because it is based on "quaint" notions of an 18th century agrarian society, it remains one of the most radical and progressive foundations for government in existence, sharply contrasted to governments implemented on the truly old-fashioned - if not ancient - notions of coercive, centralized authority, collectivism, and social stratification. That's right: our Constitution is still "radical" because it turns political philosophy on its head by identifying the voluntary relationships between free individuals as the primary organizing principle of society.
This philosophical orientation did not culminate with the founding of the United States, it has continued to be debated and refined since then in the work of people like von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Rothbard, Sobran, and Kirk, to name a few.
Part of the modern Tea Party - certainly not all - represents a rediscovery of these founding principles, and their implications in a modern society. Many people who associate themselves with the Tea Party are on a journey of intellectual discovery - whether they know it or not - and as their ideas about government evolve, so will the dominant ideas being championed by the Tea Party.
Combined with the effect of external forces exerted by the established political parties and its own internal evolution, the only thing I would expect in the future is that the Tea Party movement will continue to change. As long the Tea Party remains at least somewhat independent, its adherents will continue to search for a cogent set of policies and positions that provide a practical and intellectually satisfying alternative to the solutions presented by the two party system for what is perceived by a diverse and significant portion of the populace to be a government and society that is on an undesirable and unsustainable trajectory. I can only hope they are successful.
How is the tea party in any way independent? Any elected were elected as Republicans, are legislating with an R behind their names. Sell Out party is more like it. Until they stand independently they are nothing more than Republicans.
Anybody catch Huckabee's comments about Academy Award winner Natalie Portman's out-of-wedlock children and her live-in boyfriend, how she's not sending the right message? Do we want someone governing the country who points fingers at people who don't believe his way? I haven't heard him say one peep about Bristol Palin and all her cash stash as she pleads for mercy at the altar of the almighty dollar for her (opps!) out-of-wedlock pregnancy that no one has batted an eyelash about in the Republican party. Jesus calls these kinds of hypocrites the worst kind of name: vipers!!!! Just another thing to add to his rather lengthy gaffe-ridden resume.
Huckleberry is mired in the 12th Century. He believes in Creationism, that the earth is 6700 years old and that insects, birds, reptiles, mammals and human beings "arrived on the earth abruptly and fully formed." That is like believing that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it.
He is far too detached from reality to be a capable President.
Hopefully God. He hates lying and bearing false witness, plotting evil, and creating discord among the brethren. I wonder who will win that battle? When Beck invoked God he forgot who he was invoking. I have faith God will win this one.
All the teabaggers suck!!!!
It is going to be defining moment in 2012. We either go back or go forward. We choose our "leaders" who will lead us in in one direction or the other. The conservatives hate progress and will fight any change that threatens the broad status-quo of the rich knowing what is best for us, and the Dems are standing on the philosophy of taking from the super-rich to better the average income of the underclass. There has to be a middle ground somewhere.. Vote Independent...
Tea Party not independent....
Huckleberry is a nut job. What time period is he living in? The Republican Party doesn't stand a chance with characters like this guy. When did the party switch from being conservative to totally radical? Because of these Tea Partiers, I've switched sides like so many others. At least the democrats are more realistic.... The Tea Party has left a stain on the entire Republican Party and it's a shame. Conservative, Yes.... Radical, NO.
I'm with you. I stood in line to vote at the last Presidential election and I was still undecided. Only when I got up to the voting booth did I make up my mind - to vote Democrat for the first time in my life. Sarah Palin was just too awful to vote for. But in the two years since, I am amazed how far the Republican Party has moved away from me. Now every word that comes out of a "Republican" mouth seems to be either bigotry, ignorant, or greedy. Their is nothing honorable about these people - and it is appalling that they claim to represent American values.
I am a registered Republican but consider myself an independent voter now. I cast my first vote for Ronald Reagan and voted for every Republican candidate until John McCain pulled the idiotic Sarah Palin move. Right now I won't vote Republican on anything. The modern Republican party represents three B.I.G. things - Bigotry, Ignorance, and Greed. Those are the hallmarks of the modern day Republican movement - there is nothing honorable or "American" in their ideals. I just got back from a quick one week trip to Europe yesterday. My time was spent with well educated people involved in European politics. The Republicans make us look like a bunch of ignorant buffoons on the world stage. Mike Huckabee's comments do so much to destroy what is left of American prestige overseas.
GCV- my observations exactly. We ave gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. My only wish is that now that the Republicans and Tea Party members have shown their true colors (snake skin), we can have an election right now, rather than waiting for 2012.
Texas-505356 "...Pres. Bush tried to shut down Fred and Fannie May years ago but the DEMs shot that down..." Hardly. If you had done your research first, you would have learned that the Bush administration killed the legislation - they told their congressional leaders to not allow the Freddie and Fanny legislation out of committee. They received so much flack about the legislation from their Republican supporters that the Bush administration killed their own legislation. If we all stopped listening to the talking heads from all sides, we might be able to make intelligent decisions about our leaders.
I reported 8 messages on the first page as inflammatory for using "teabagger" as an insult or lying about its origins. If more people did this, msnbc might get the message and ban its use.
Eric--do you know how the term originated?
Just listened to Michele Bachman on Meet the Press. With this article , recent events and Bachman, I have one question: What the heck are these people drinking and has it been added to the water of what once were normal Americans? Go back and read some of the comments here and you will easily see what I mean. Unbelievable!
Marissa, the good news is that buyers remorse is running strong with regular Americans and that people are rapidly figuring out they've been sold a bill of goods by people who don't see the world in any but a truly radical way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030304233.html?nav=emailpage