Rasmussen: Tea party is grassroots, not Astroturf

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A new book by national pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen explains that the Tea Party movement is a genuine grassroots movement, not a corporate-led Astroturf falsehood as critics allege.

The book, released just two weeks ago, is titled Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System. It’s based on research and polling conducted by Rasmussen and Schoen. The authors tackle head-on the nature and origins of the Tea Party movement. As to the authenticity of the movement, they write:

The question has been asked of whether the Tea Party is an authentic national movement with broad-based support, or a more limited narrow movement that has only been able to produce real crowds and real enthusiasm because of so-called Astroturf.

Fortunately a large amount of research has been done by a wide variety of organizations that answer the question definitively.

First, the Tea Party movement is broad based with wide support.

A theme in the book is that the elite class in America simply does not understand the depth and breath of the Tea Party movement. And according to Rasmussen and Schoen, the Tea Party represents a real and powerful uprising or groundswell of right-wing populism. Not understanding the depth and breadth of the Tea Party — or if they do understand it, then fearing it — elites criticize it. They denigrate tea party supporters by labeling them as Astroturf — fake grassroots.

That is an insult. It illustrates that the political elite in this country do not believe that ordinary citizens are capable of forming their own opinions. Casting the tea party as Astroturf is an easy way for elites to criticize the party without dealing with the realities of the issues that Tea Party supporters are confronting.

In a similar fashion, by concentrating on the fringe elements of tea party supporters — racists, “truthers,” and “birthers” — critics are able to deflect attention from the very real and important issues that tea party supporters are working on.

This book contains many important observations about American politics and society. I’ll be looking at more over the next weeks.

The Washington Examiner has a series of excerpts of the book at Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen: One nation under revolt

Comments

2 responses to “Rasmussen: Tea party is grassroots, not Astroturf”

  1. Anonymous

    The Ron Paul movement started it. The GOP and Palin hijacked it!

  2. Ann H.

    Regarding this quote: “Not understanding the depth and breadth of the Tea Party — or if they do understand it, then fearing it — elites criticize it. They denigrate tea party supporters by labeling them as Astroturf — fake grassroots. That is an insult. It illustrates that the political elite in this country do not believe that ordinary citizens are capable of forming their own opinions.”

    I do not agree. The elites know *full well* that the tea party isn’t astroturf (they should know–astroturf is *their* MO), but rather they are doing what they do best–trying to deceive the public and turn opinion against the tea party through lying. They are trying to play on the ignorance and lack of willingness to look into the truth displayed by an alarmingly high percentage of the American population. Anyone who has been involved in the tea party or even just observed the tea party–even the tiniest bit–knows this claim is pure bunk.

    I’m getting tired of writers with a right-wing bent being unwilling to assume anyone has truly bad intentions. It must be that the elites “just don’t understand” or “aren’t in tune with the people” or are “incompetent” (that last one is used to describe Barack Obama fairly frequently). NO! The elites know exactly what they’re doing, they understand perfectly, and they are plenty competent (some real dingbats in Congress notwithstanding–but they are just yes-men/women to the elites anyway). They have Progressive/Marxist plans and they mean to carry them out however they are able to do so, by lying, deceiving, fraud, corruption, and ignoring the will of the people.

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