A census sign that the Tea Party is less than it seems
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
|
The 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, who made the Republican Party an elephant and the Democratic Party a donkey, would, if he were alive today, have reason to draw the Tea Party as a paper tiger.
At least if the Great Census Panic of 2010 is any indication.
Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and others in the Tea Party's starting lineup have warned Americans about the evils of the census, and many activists have called for a boycott. This prompted fears among Republicans that they would lose seats in Congress if conservatives refused to be counted, and Karl Rove took to the airwaves this week to urge compliance.
He could have saved his breath. There's evidence that this Tea Party rebellion is a bust.
That's how it looks based on a Washington Post analysis of census data. I asked The Post's database guru, Dan Keating, to break down the census response rates so far this year and to determine whether Republican counties were lagging in their census returns.
He found that, as of Thursday, counties that went for John McCain in 2008 were returning census forms at a slightly higher rate than counties that went for Barack Obama: 62.4 percent to 62.0 percent. Heavily Republican counties were responding at a higher rate than heavily Democratic counties (61.0 to 58.0 percent), and moderately Republican counties were complying a bit more than moderately Democratic counties (64.7 percent to 64.4 percent).
The proportions are roughly the same as they were in the 2000 census; if anything, Republican response rates are better than last time. The Post analysis isn't the last word -- there's plenty of counting to go, and other cultural and socioeconomic factors are at play -- but there's no sign of a mass conservative boycott.
There are other indications, too, that the conservative Tea Party movement is louder than it is big. Remember the Tea Party rally on the Capitol grounds the day of the House health-care vote? There was a pro-immigration rally on the Mall that day that attracted far more people. But the Tea Party got much greater attention, in part because Republican lawmakers joined the protest from the House balcony. In addition, most Tea Party-backed candidates have had little electoral success. As the Wall Street Journal reported, 18 Republican House members faced primary challenges last month in Texas, but all incumbents won easily.
Post polling director Jon Cohen notes that 28 percent of Americans viewed the Tea Party movement favorably in a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll this year (nearly half of the 28 percent said they got their TV news from Fox). But that doesn't mean they're all out waving yellow flags. A CNN poll found that 2 percent of Americans said they gave money to Tea Party causes and 5 percent said they attended an event.
This isn't to say Tea Party conservatives won't be an important force this year, or that Democrats will have anything but a grim midterm election. But this reality may have less to do with a new conservative revolution than with old-fashioned economic concerns.
Republican pollster David Winston found that a plurality of Tea Party "members" said the economy and jobs are their top concerns, ahead of the deficit and spending issues that are the Tea Party signature. Tea Party loyalists, by two to one, favored reducing unemployment over balancing the budget.
Maybe that's why the anti-government words of the Tea Party leaders don't show up in concrete actions such as filling out and returning census forms. Bachmann warned that census taking could lead to "internment camps." Fox News's Beck warned that census's race questions were an attempt "to increase slavery." Paul, popular in the movement despite some squabbles, said "the invasive nature of the current census raises serious questions."
At first, it appeared these voices were being heard. The Houston Chronicle reported that the Texas census response was low and cited "anti-government conservatives who may not fill out their forms to protest against 'Big Brother.' "
Republicans were alarmed. "Early census returns are showing that conservatives have been measurably less likely than liberals to return their census forms," Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.). wrote on RedState.com, blaming "blatant misinformation coming from otherwise well-meaning conservatives."
McHenry gave the demagogues too much credit. On further review, the response pattern in Texas, as in the rest of the nation, looks pretty much as it did a decade ago -- when Beck worked at a Tampa radio station, Bachmann was running for the Minnesota state Senate, Paul was a little-known congressman, and a tea party involved Darjeeling.
