December 07, 2009 10:55 PM UTC

The Scariest Thing I've Seen in a While

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• by: Raphael

Rasmussen came out with a poll today that shows a possible “Tea Party” topping the Republican party in a generic ballot.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Even more frightening, from my point of view, is the demographic from which a mythological Tea Party would gain its support:

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

That’s right, unaffiliated voters, the “crown-level” so to speak of any competitive race (at least on a federal level) prefer the extremist views of Tea Baggers over Democrats or Republicans.

This, is frightening.

First of all, I worry what this means for current and future candidates. Will we see them catering more to ridiculous “starve the beast” catch phrases and ideologies?

Second, what does this mean about the American electorate? For all that it’s nice to blame people in office, Karl Rove, or whatever your favorite scapegoat may be, politicians cater to what they think we the voters want in order to get elected. So are extremist conservatives like Bachmann, Penry, Schaffer, Palin (take your pick) the problem or the reaction? Surely we as the voters must take some of the blame for the decline in our political dialogue and the rise of the kind of ridiculous/unreasonable politics and economics that the tea partiers represent. But what does that say about us as a people? Kind of sad, depending on your point of view.

Finally (as an update, or rather point I forgot), what does this mean for McInnis? Obviously people here have been wondering about the impact of these initiatives on McInnis’ campaign, do these numbers indicate more that he should, or will, ultimately support these economy-killing initiatives?

And before anyone bashes Rasmussen as unreliable and a tool of the conservative movement, I would argue that they actually fairly reliable (predictions in 2008 were reasonable consistent). The difference is mainly that they tend to poll likely voters in head-to-head matchups and issue polling, which I think is actually a boon to their methodology and increases the internal validity of their models.

Here’s the link to the poll, but can someone answer me, what the hell is going on in our country?!?!?!

http://www.rasmussenreports.co…