40% of Tea Partiers are Dems and Independents, How Will Media Report the News?

April 4th, 2010 9:00 PM

For almost a year, the mainstream media have depicted members of the Tea Party movement as racist, right-wing extremists.

On Sunday, a survey was released finding 40 percent of Tea Partiers are Democrats and Independents.

Given the media's hatred for everyone involved in this growing movement, how will they react to and report this startling revelation released hours ago by The Hill (h/t Pat Dollard):

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal. [...]

The group is united around two issues – the economy/jobs and reducing the deficit. They believe that cutting spending is the key to job creation and favor tax cuts as the best way to stimulate the economy. That said 61 percent of Tea Party members believe infrastructure spending creates jobs. Moreover, given the choice Tea Party members favor 63-32 reducing unemployment to 5 percent over balancing the budget.

Here are some findings media might find agreeable:

The group also vehemently dislikes President Barack Obama – even more so than those who called themselves Republicans in the survey. Over 80 percent of Tea Party members disapprove of the job he’s doing as president, whereas 77 percent of Republican respondents said they disapprove of Obama. The Tea Party members are also strongly opposed to the Democrats’ healthcare plan, with 82 percent saying they oppose it --  only 48 percent of respondents overall were opposed. [...]

Almost half the members of the group reported getting their news about national issues from Fox News, 10 percent of respondents said that talk radio is one of their top two sources, which is seven-points higher than average voter. 

Yeah, the Fox and talk radio-haters in the press will surely like those findings, assuming this gets much attention at all.

How will they report it?

Stay tuned.