On major issues, 48% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is closer to their views than President Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% hold the opposite view and believe the president’s views are closer to their own.

Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly feel closer to the Tea Party and most Democrats say that their views are more like Obama’s. Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 50% say they’re closer to the Tea Party while 38% side with the President.

...

In official Washington, some consider the Tea Party movement a fringe element in society, but voters across the nation feel closer to the Tea Party movement than they do to Congress.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress. Only 30% believe that those in Congress have a better understanding of the key issues facing the nation.

When it comes to those issues, 47% think that their own political views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the views of the average member of Congress. On this point, 26% feel closer to Congress.

Finally, 46% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is more ethical than the average member of Congress. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say that the average member of Congress is more ethical.

...

TDS Co-Editor William Galston: The Perils of Polarization

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.

The daily commentary about the Obama era has largely overlooked a trend that is now unmistakable—namely, the growing conservative sentiment in this country that goes well beyond the tea-party rallies and Glenn Beck’s rants.

Gallup offered the first piece of compelling evidence. On January 7, 2010, it reported that self-identified conservatives had increased from an average of 37 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 40 percent in 2009. (By contrast, moderates and liberals each decreased by one percentage point during that period.) Gallup based its conclusion on a synthesis of surveys taken throughout 2009, with a total sample of nearly 22 thousand and a margin of error of less than +/- one percentage point. It found, moreover, that ideological shifts among independents—a three-point drop in moderate identifiers, coupled with a five point-gain in conservative identifiers—accounted for most of the overall change.

The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll underscores Gallup’s conclusion. The week of Barack Obama’s inauguration, 24 percent of respondents identified themselves as liberal, 42 percent as moderate, and 32 percent as conservative. In the latest survey period (March 23-26, 2010), by contrast, only 32 percent called themselves moderate, while 42 percent now regarded themselves as conservative—a remarkable 10 percentage-point shift. (Liberals remained unchanged at 24 percent.) I have not been able to find another survey in recent decades that gave conservatives that large a share, or moderates that small a share. While it’s easy to question the significance of a single poll, the liberal/moderate/conservative breakdown as measured by the Washington Post and ABC has averaged 22/38/37 during the Obama administration, versus 22/43/34 during George W. Bush’s second term—clear evidence of a shift toward conservatism among moderates.

These results are part of a polarization of the electorate that has been underway for a generation. While comparisons among polls using differing methodologies is dicey, trends within polls are revealing. In 1992, Gallup found that moderates averaged 43 percent, versus 36 percent for conservatives and only 17 points for liberals. By 2009, both conservatives and liberals had picked up 4 percentage points, while moderates had decreased by 7 points. To be sure, there have been twists and turns along the way. But the overall direction of the tectonic shift is clear.

Let’s take an even longer view. In a study published in the first volume of Brookings’ Red and Blue Nation?, the political scientist Alan Abramowitz examined two decades of evidence from the authoritative National Election Studies. In 1984, he found, 41 percent of voters were at or near the ideological midpoint, versus only 10 percent at or near the left and right endpoints of the scale. By 2004, only 28 percent were at or near the midpoint (a decline of 13 percentage points), while respondents at or near the endpoints had risen by 13 points, to 23 percent.

It remains the case that Washington is more polarized than the nation as a whole. The most recent analysis using the standard political science scoring system found zero ideological overlap between Democrats and Republicans in either chamber of Congress. Which means that in both the House and the Senate, the most conservative Democrat is more liberal than is the most liberal Republican. In the electorate, Democrats who consider themselves moderate or conservative still overlap with similar Republican identifiers. But as Republicans have shed liberals and moderates over the past generation, the overlap has diminished.

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama was obviously aware of these trends, and he understood that Americans were tired of the kind of politics they had engendered. He took office pledging to reverse them. Quite obviously, this has not happened. Historians and political scientists will long debate whether it could have turned out differently, whether a different White House strategy might have weakened the Republicans’ early decision to present a united front in opposition. A plausible case can be made that an achievable bipartisan stimulus bill would have been less effective than the one adopted nearly along party lines—and that there was not enough common ground between Democrats and Republicans to produce significant health insurance reform. Still, it is hard to believe that any political party enjoys a monopoly on wisdom, so a situation in which the minority party gives the majority no incentive to accept the minority’s good ideas is bound to produce sub-optimal results.

Whatever the substantive merits of single-party legislation, there are other reasons to keep working toward more agreement across party lines. Political science research finds a strong inverse relation between the level of combat between the parties and citizens’ trust in their governing institution. While a measure of mistrust is functional in a democracy, excessive mistrust hampers democratic self-government. With trust at historic lows, we have reached that point. And progressives should remember that mistrust hampers those who wish to use government affirmatively more than it does those who seek to limit it.

Regardless, American politics now seems condemned to an extended period of intense polarization, with an expanding army of aroused conservatives fighting to halt and reverse what it sees as the deplorable Europeanization of our economy and society. I doubt that a politics so configured will be able to address our long-term economic problems—until a crisis forces us to. I hope I’m wrong.

Posted by staff on April 6, 2010 08:54 AM

Proverbs 22:24-25
Make no friendship with an angry man,
And with a furious man do not go,
Lest you learn his ways
And set a snare for your soul.

In fact, I felt sympathy for just about everyone in that class. In private conversation, they all seemed like good-hearted, intelligent people. But like communist die-hards confessing their counter-revolutionary thought-crimes at a Soviet workers' council, or devout Catholics on their knees in the confessional, they also seemed utterly consumed by their sin, regarding their pallor as a sort of moral leprosy. I came to see them as Lady Macbeths in reverse -- cursing skin with nary a "damn'd spot." Even basic communication with friends and fellow activists, I observed, was a plodding agony of self-censorship, in which every syllable was scrutinized for subconscious racist connotations as it was leaving their mouths.

FCC Announces Transparency Plans on a Scanned PDF

March 15, 2010

What struck me most about the executive summary of the FCC’s “National Broadband Plan” is that they published it in one of the most opaque formats going: It’s a PDF scan of a printed document.

This means you can’t cut and paste the bullet point that says:

Increase civic engagement by making government more open and transparent, creating a robust public media ecosystem and modernizing the democratic process.

Sunstein (along with his coauthor Richard Thaler) has elaborated the theory of libertarian paternalism. [like compassionate conservatism, the exact opposite of limited government- B] In arguing for this theory, he counsels thinkers/academics/politicians to embrace the findings of behavioral economics as applied to law, maintaining freedom of choice while also steering people's decisions in directions that will make their lives go better. With Thaler, he coined the term "choice architect."

In his book Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech Sunstein says there is a need to reformulate First Amendment law. He thinks that the current formulation, based on Justice Holmes' conception of free speech as a marketplace “disserves the aspirations of those who wrote America’s founding document.”[14] The purpose of this reformulation would be to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.”[15] He is concerned by the present “situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,”[16] and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.”[17] He proposes a “New Deal for speech...

Sunstein has argued, “We should celebrate tax day.”

"Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."[22]

Sunstein and Vermeule also analyze the practice of secret government payments to outside commentators, who are then held out as independent experts; they suggest that "government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes," further warning that "too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed."[22] Sunstein and Vermeule argue that the practice of enlisting non-government officials, "might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts." This position has been criticized by some commentators,[23][24] who argue that it would violate prohibitions on government propaganda aimed at domestic citizens.

I'm surprised no one else asked for more. I'll indulge you" but talk to a Berkley professor and he will tell you proudly that the USSR was a representative democracy."

"A spoiled child (Bush) is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here's your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little b*****d. [audio of gun being cocked]." -- A "humor bit" from the Randi Rhodes Show

"I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health" -- New York city councilman Charles Barron

"..And then there's Rumsfeld who said of Iraq 'We have our good days and our bad days.' We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days' and pull the trigger." -- From a fundraising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

"...but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can't be reasoned with. They're selfish and stupid. It's unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing's for sure: It couldn't be happening to a more deserving group of people." -- Ted Rall winks at ecoterrorism

"F*** God D****d Joe the God D*mned M********king plumber! I want M***********g Joe the plumber dead." -- Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.

"Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm." -- The Village Voice's Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places

"I know how the 'tea party' people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their 'Obama Plan White Slavery' signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." -- The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy

My Congressman Eric Cantor, and you and your cupcake evil wife..." "Remember Eric...our judgment time, the final Yom Kippur has been given. You are a liar, you're a Lucifer, you're a pig, a greedy f*****g pig, you're an abomination, you receive my bullets in...your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations." -- Obama campaign contributor Norman Laboom

Or how about this movie, getting 6.5/10 stars on the IMDB:

Death of a President (2006): Years after the assassination of President George W. Bush in Chicago, an investigative documentary examines that as-yet-unsolved crime.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans?

---

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob?

---

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of sh;t and I told him to suck on my machine gun.”

---

Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

---

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.”

---

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?”

---

Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead.

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Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.”

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Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies.

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In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color.

Beck: OK, Amy [Kremer chair of the Tea Party Express] I have to ask you, there’s been controversy surrounding the Tea Party Express: Mark Williams [former Tea Party Express chair]. He is a guy who said, Allah is a ‘monkey-god’. He said all Muslims are animals. He said we need to repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments. He said things about the President of the United States – all of them are inexcusable.

Kremer: Right.

Beck: He is no longer with you organization. Kremer: No, he is not. He is no longer with our organization; he resigned as chairman well over a month ago and is no longer with the organization at all.

Beck: Ok. And do you reject those statements and those ideas behind those statements?

Kremer: Absolutely. And not only myself, but the Tea Party Express rejects those statements and those ideas. Mark Williams, while I don’t agree with him, I certainly would have never said them and I wish he wouldn’t have said them, he did that on his own behalf, on his own blog, it’s not representative of the Tea Party Express or the tea party movement and I agree with everyone else, that that kind of thing will not be tolerated.

Beck: Did you know Mark?

Kremer: Yes I know Mark.

Beck: And you didn’t –I mean some people can hide you know, things, like crazy. But you didn’t see that coming at all from him?

Kremer: Mark is –I mean he –Mark is a radio talk show host. He is sensational, he is a shock jock. He says things in ways you nor I would say them.

Beck: Hold on just a second, I’m a recovering shock jock. I got into radio when I was 13 years old and believe me, Howard Stern has –well, no. He outdid me, but in my wildest dreams I would have never said Allah is a monkey-god or all Muslims are animals or we should repeal the 13th or 14th Amendment. Shock jock doesn’t cover that.

Kremer: Glenn, that is Mark Williams personality and I can’t sit here and make excuses for him. I mean he is no longer with our Tea Party Express and you know, I’m not gonna comment for Mark Williams. I don’t agree with what he said, the Tea Party Express doesn’t agree with it and that’s not what we wanna base it on.

Beck: Amy I hate to hammer you on this because I understand he is gone but if you had somebody who was leading it who was saying things like that, and in the current atmosphere – not way in the past – but in the current atmosphere, how do you make sure that your members know [that] ‘we will rat you out. Even if you are a shock jock, we don’t want you to be anywhere near us, because we do not agree with those things?’

Kremer: Well that’s exactly why Mark Williams resigned right after the monkey-god comment, or blog post on his blog. And I was on the view back in May and I said then and I’ll say it again that we’re not gonna tolerate racism. There’s no place for it in this movement. Not only myself, but the people in the movement aren’t gonna tolerate it. And I mean I’ve had conversations with him about it. But again, I can’t speak for him, but I know that we at Tea Party Express do not – we are not racists, we are not gonna tolerate that, we have, you know, several African Americans, William Marcus, William Owens, Kevin Jackson, even Herman Kaine (sp) heads a part of Tea Pary Express and participated with us. We’re actually having a black conservative event in Washington next week that I think Herman Kaine just confirmed at. Our members know that that’s not what Tea Party Express is about.

Beck: Amy thank you very much we’ll be back in just a second.

---

Beck: Back with Mark Scotta (sp) Jenny Beth Martin, Matt Kibbe (sp) and Yvonne Donnelly (sp). I guess, Jenny, lemme come to you because, Tea Party Express… Tea Party Patriots… there is the confusion between the two and the statements that we just heard from Amy about a former president of The Tea Party Express are horrifying.

Martin: They are horrifying. And we’ve known this, Tea Party Patriots has known about this from September of last year. We put out a statement, publicly distancing ourselves from that entire organization because they wouldn’t distance themselves from him. And just last week Amy Kremer said she wouldn’t throw a fellow conservative under the bus, talking about Mark Williams. If that happened in our organization, with one of our national coordinators, they’d be out and it would be on public record that we would not tolerate that.

Beck: So does your organization condemn that organization now?

Martin: We do. They knew last year that he was making comments that were unacceptable about the president. And they stood by him.

Beck: Let me tell you- does anybody here buy into the... well he’s a radio talk show host thing?

Entire Panel: Not at all, absolutely not.

Beck: That conversation with Amy- I’m sorry Amy but it just doesn’t ring true to me and it’s just not right.

Martin: When you’re a spokesperson for an organization or the chairman for the organization, that’s so public, like the Tea Party Express or Tea Party Patriots or Freedom Works, any of these, we don’t have our own blog and our own voice. Everything we say is under a microscope and will be associated with our organization and the movement.

In the past few days, tea party websites in the Pine Tree State have offered glimpses of what some are calling a coup at the one of the state's largest tea party groups, The Maine Patriots.

On Tuesday night, Amy Hale -- one of the leaders of the Patriots group -- posted an odd message to the group's website, suggesting that she'd been forced to give up control of the site, according to media reports (the post has since been removed):

I was cornered in the parking lot by 10+ people and told that bad things would happen to me if I did not give them the password and hand over Maine Patriots. Therefore, I no longer have control of Maine Patriots. Amy

Police are investigating a complaint by the founder of the Maine Patriots website, Amy Hale of Hartland, who said she was surrounded by a group of people and threatened until she relinquished control of the site.

The site is reportedly popular among supporters of the Maine Tea Party movement.

Hale, in a message Wednesday night on the site, wrote that more than 10 people cornered her and told her that "bad things" would happen to her if she did not give them the password to the website for the Maine Patriots.

Her message, which was posted on the Maine Patriots' website, mainepatriots.ning.com, matches what she reported to police, Maine State Police Trooper Jon Brown said.

Her online statement was "I was cornered in the parking lot by 10+ people and told that bad things would happen to me if I did not give them the password and hand over Maine Patriots. Therefore, I no longer have control of Maine Patriots."

The Maine Patriots' website features a Fox News feed, blog, history section and updates on Tea Party events. The flag image on its home page is inscribed with: "I am a proud Maine Patriot dedicated to restoring the Constitution, maintaining & defending state sovereignty and saving our Republic!"

---

Although the investigation is ongoing, messages posted on a related site, Maine Refounders, at paintmainered.ning.com, suggested the incident followed an internal dispute about Hale's leadership.

Joseph DeCoste of North Anson has a website, teapartymaine.org, that links to Hale's. He said he was familiar with the "growing pains" of Maine Patriots.

"The things that are happening are overshadowing the larger picture," he said. "There's very much concern that this type of in-fighting and dispute between siblings of the movement is clouding the big story."

A message posted on the sister site Maine Refounders [requires registration -mith] provides some more details, including that this appears to be an internal Tea Party dispute and that the police are now involved:

Members,

It saddens me to have to make this announcement. Yesterday, a group of members of Maine Patriots extorted the passwword and took control of Maine Patriots' website. Amy is working with the parent site Ning to correct this. A police report is being filed.

Please keep Amy Hale in your thoughts and prayers. She will need our support to get through this. If you have any questions, please call or email me or Robert. We are staying in touch with Amy.

In Unity,

David Andreasen

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law. These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.

NY Tea Party Candidate Paladino: 'I'll Use Eminent Domain to Stop the Mosque'

Tea Party-endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate for New York, Carl Paladino, has released a campaign video attacking the Park51 project:

“As governor, I will use the power of eminent domain to stop the mosque, and use the site as a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country.”

LGF readers may remember Carl Paladino. In April we had a story about the blatantly racist (and sexist) emails he was sending to his list: Tea Parties? Racism? No Way!

One of the videos he forwarded (now deleted from YouTube for obvious reasons) was titled “Obama Inauguration Ceremony,” and may have originated at the neo-Nazi site Stormfront (Google search link). A screenshot:

Didier said, “I want to endorse Dino Rossi, I really do. I want to beat Patty Murray in the worst way. I want to send her home with her pink slip in her hand.” But he says he’s gotten hundreds of emails from supporters who do not support Rossi. Noting that one-third of the GOP vote—”more than 150,000 people who gave me their vote and their trust”—was cast in his favor he said, “I know my endorsement is very important to my supporters. I know that my supporters aren’t going to automatically vote for Rossi. And a lot them told me they won’t vote for him at all.”

In order to unite the party behind Rossi to beat Murray, and to get Didier to endorse and campaign for Rossi, he said he needs those three assurances. He said he couldn’t make “a half-hearted endorsement because it wouldn’t really help Rossi win the race, unless my supporters know that I really mean it.”