Researchers: Tea Partiers Are Xenophobic, Fear Change, And Cling Bitterly To Their Guns and Religion

Meet the new study, same as the old study.

The trick here is the same as in all of these "studies." A series of questions are asked, most of which are, to the disinterested observer and especially to the bona fide scientist, neutral in nature.

But then, in the report-writing/media PR unveiling phase, these "scientists" assign the respondents' answers moral values.

That's odd for a scientist, isn't it? Taking neutral policy preference data and assigning it a moral, quasi-religious import?

They also contradict themselves left and right, but that's okay, as long as the report is internally consistent in branding everything about the Tea Party morally weak.

Tea party voters are more likely to fear change and harbor negative attitudes toward immigrants, according to a study presented Monday at the American Sociological Association's annual conference in Las Vegas.

"Fear change?" "Fear" is a loaded, emotional word. What they mean of course is that the Tea Party resists the progressive agenda. But that wouldn't make headlines, as it's obvious, so "resists the progressive agenda" becomes "fears change."

As far as "negative" feelings about immigrants -- yes, but how many of those "negative" feelings are of a legitimate policy question nature? As usual the good little court astrologers flatter the king by calling his enemies weak and pitiful.

The study, called "Cultures of the Tea Party," also claims voters who felt favorably toward the tea party movement valued deference to authority and libertarianism.

Deference to authoritarianism and libertarianism?

Did the writers look up these words? They're nearly direct opposites.

I think a more scientific way to report it is that the Tea Party favors some government intervention in some social areas where the socialist charlatans would prefer none, and that they disfavor government intervention in economic areas where the progressive bone-casters want lots.

But this means that the progressives themselves could be described as, depending on the issue, "deferring to both authoritarianism and libertarianism."

But that would be 1, obvious, and 2, not newsworthy and worse 3, insufficiently flattering to progressives.

So the report takes the noticeably unscientific position that economic paternalism and social-values libertinism must be the "correct" policy profile, and any deviation from that evidence of moral and intellectual degredation.

Ergo, Tea Partiers defer to both authoritarianism and libertarianism, whereas progressives... just believe in common sense, I guess, which is libertarianism and authoritarianism. But note the correct order there.

...

The findings are based on a telephone poll of nearly 4,500 registered voters in North Carolina and Tennessee conducted last year. The researchers also conducted 10 interviews and kept track of any signs and costumes at a tea party rally in North Carolina...

They kept track of the costumes and signs? Oh dear. I hope they didn't spy any giant paper machiere Vampire Dick Cheneys.

You can infer from that last bit that this was intended to be a hit job from the outset.

...

The poll also found that 51 percent of people who were very concerned about "changes taking place in American society these days" were tea party supporters. Nearly 85 percent of tea party supporters said the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted "as the Founders intended," compared to only 34 percent of other respondents.

But tea party supporters were twice as likely as others to favor constitutional amendments, including a ban on flag burning and an overhaul of the 14th Amendment, which states that people born in the United States are citizens.

"The (tea party) supporters' inconsistent views of the Constitution suggests that their nostalgic embrace of the document is animated more by a network of cultural associations than a thorough commitment to the original text," the report states.

Wait, but what about all this "fear change" when they actively pursue change?

And I don't even have to note the strangeness of claiming it is "inconsistent" to demand the Constitution be implemented as written, including making changes to it, via the Amendment process, which is as written.

Again, note the opposite here, and how this writer would not similarly cast his fellow communist organ-squeezers as "inconsistent." Progressives fear change, as they resist constitutional amendments, and yet inconsistently demand that the Constitution be changed at the whim of five judges armed with public opinion surveys and treatises on foreign law.

Oh, but that's consistent. The guys saying the Constitution should be read as it's actually written, and changed via the mechanism specified within it -- those guys are the "inconsistent" ones who "fear change."

These reports always do the same thing-- they take a particular political agenda, socialist/collectivist transnational progressivism, assume that (completely unscientifically) to the be the self-evidently correct position and therefore the priviledged position, then note the bloody obvious that non-progressives do not believe in progressivism.

Then they go off on a Tourettes jag calling non-progressives cowards, morons, haters and brutes.

And then they slap a brand name on it-- Science (TM).

posted by Ace at 12:08 PM

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