More NBC/WSJ Poll: Tea Party Movement Has High Favorables, Beating the GOP... and the Democratic Party

Something I didn't notice but Allah did.

The entire Republican Party, moreover, continues to maintain a net-negative favorable/unfavorable rating, 28 percent to 43 percent.

But, for the first time in more than two years, the Democratic Party also now holds a net-negative rating, 35 percent to 45 percent.

By comparison, the conservative libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement has a net-positive 41 percent to 23 percent score in the poll.

Checking in with a shocked, stunned, and in all other ways quite chagrined Chris Matthews, who wants to argue endlessly about the poll.

Chuck Todd attempts to defend himself as Chris Matthews basically keeps yapping at him for reporting reality.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: And what about the tea party movement? This is the shock-a-roo. They have a 2 to 1 positive rating but insider information from Chuck Todd explains why, perhaps.

CHUCK TODD: Well look there's a couple of, couple of demographic-ing. You know we, we- among Fox News viewers the tea party movement is enormously popular - 75 percent of a positive feeling toward it. Just five percent among everybody else, non-Fox viewers, as far as how you get your information, the tea party movement actually has a slight net negative. Still overall, it gives you that positive 41 percent.

MATTHEWS: Well that tells you the power of Fox, in a way, doesn't it?

TODD: The power of Fox in branding this tea party movement-

MATTHEWS: Right.

TODD: -as a populist, outside Washington. Because that's the other thing.

MATTHEWS: So it's a horse in rabbit stew. An overwhelming love of these tea parties by one group of people offsets the metza-metza view from other people.

As Rush Limbaugh says, "Stop the tape."

The Tea Party movement had a favorable rating of 41%. This is not a majority, obviously. But it is a plurality (considering that one third or so have no opinion and only 23% have a negative opinion).

And it's a higher favorable rating than the Democratic Party earns-- if the Tea Party is fringy and kookoobananas with 41% favorables, what the hell does that make the Democratic Party with its paltry 35% favorables?

Note the absurd liberal bias. This is what I cannot stand. This is the thing that I hate the most. He dismisses the 41% -- forty-one percent! -- as fringe. And yet his buddies, with their 35%, are deemed, or the 23% of the people with a negative view of the Tea Party, are deemed, by him at least, to constitute... what? A majority?

That seems to be his implication. That the majority still opposes this fringe. But the numbers, obviously, say the exact opposite. So how on earth can he even suggest such a thing?

Easy: Because what is going on in his mind is that he is dismissing the 41% -- forty-one percent! -- as entirely invalid and not worth listening to. Without even pondering it, he effectively disenfranchises 41% of the country and rules them to be without a voice or vote in the country's politics.

And, those lunatics thus excluded, as they should be (we quarantine the dangerously mentally ill, don't we?), he then looks at the other 59%, and sees that of that fraction of the country actually worth paying heed to, the Democrats have a bare majority.

They do this all the time. And this is, in fact, what he just did. If you could do a sci-fi brain scan transcript of his exact thoughts, what I just wrote would be a pretty close paraphrase.

Liberals are forever touting themselves as holding not just the right view (as they see it) but the overwhelming majoritarian view, and they only can manage that latter delusion by consistently taking the 40% conservative cohort of the country and deeming it fundamentally illegitimate, invalid, insane, and therefore not truly a part of the body politic, the same as a virus or a cancer may inhabit your body but it's obviously not part of your body.

What the hell, man.

Do these people realize what it would sound like to their ears if conservatives routinely said "We constitute an overwhelmingly majority, when you exclude the 20-25% liberal vote, which you should do, as they are an illegitimate and de facto illegal party and so have as little right to weigh in on the issues of the day as convicted felons stripped of the franchise by law."

By the Way: Pistolero tells me "metza-metza" is probably the Italian mezza-mezza, for "so-so" or "meh."

Roll tape. Now Chris Matthews will object to the question about the Tea Party as "misleading," because, apparently, while asking this question on the phone, the pollsters failed to psychically beam in images of "crazy tea partiers shouting:"

TODD: Yes. It's a large group. It's a large group and that's why, for instance you have the Republican Party in Washington trying to figure out how to embrace some of this tea party movement. Michael Steele doing it. John Boehner...

MATTHEWS: Did you read the question though? It basically said, "Here's a group of conservatives who get together who are concerned about high taxes." Well what's wrong with that?

TODD: That's right.

MATTHEWS: It isn't a bunch of screaming, crazy people yelling, like you see at these parties.

TODD: True and the thing is what we, what we need just not...

MATTHEWS: I think the question was a leading-

TODD: But let's not focus on-

MATTHEWS: Yeah?

TODD: The fact is that issue is working. The fact is anti-Washington sentiment is growing. So which party is going to be the party of the populist. Okay?

MATTHEWS OVER VIDEO OF PROTESTORS: Yeah they didn't show these pictures when they asked the question.

No, they didn't show pictures when they were asking a question on the telephone. Hi, Chris Matthews, it's me, George Jetson, calling on my vidphone from the year 2233; just wanted to let you know I won't be able to make our lunch date, because I'm from the fucking future and everything.

In related news, I don't remember the media "showing pictures" of Code Pink and their big stupid Cheney Vampire puppets when asking questions about the war, nor of black-bandanna'd anarchists throwing rocks at police when they asked about the left or globalization.

And, in fact, they don't "show pictures" of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, two of the most despised politicians in America, when they ask about ObamaCare or the Democratic Party generally.

Edit: And oh yeah: They don't show positive images of the Tea Partiers, which overwhelm the negative images -- the negative images existing chiefly in the fevered, frightened imaginations of liberals.

They also don't show SEIU thugs beating up a black guy for the crime of selling silly political doodads at a Tea Party rally.

Basically, they don't show pictures at all, this being on the telephone and all.

End edit, back to original thought.

Frickin' amazing. Frickin' amazing. As the bubble of their artificial reality bursts, all their ugliest impulses are on display as they gnash and slash their way through their cognitive dissonance.

By the way: I left good, good stuff at both links. Allah's got a bit on independents trending more conservative, and the second link (Newsbusters) has Chris Matthews giving his viewers a Parental Advisory before reporting the poll: It may be disturbing to hear this, but..."

Yeah, that's right, he says that. He says a bit more than that, too.

Join The Liberals

We're a clear majority of the people who count.

You do such a good job considering your handicap. We're amazed by your progress on an almost daily basis.

posted by Ace at 11:45 AM

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