From super-pollster Scott Rasmussen yesterday:
The conventional wisdom suggests that tea party supporters have a “my way or the highway” attitude and Establishment Republicans just want a winner, but the data shows that the opposite is true.
Looking ahead to the Florida primary, 94 percent of tea party Republicans say they will vote for whomever wins the GOP nomination. Only 77 percent of non-tea party Republicans are willing to make the same pledge. This commitment to party loyalty comes even though tea party activists are less convinced than others that Romney is the strongest general election candidate. Similar results have been found in survey after survey in the 2012 primary season.
The pragmatism of the tea party is confirmed by exit polling data conducted for The Associated Press and major television networks in New Hampshire. Among those who support the tea party, 44 percent said the ability to beat President Obama was the most important quality they wanted in a candidate. Nothing else came close.
However, among those who oppose the tea party, only 19 percent put electability first. Fifty-three percent of this group said experience is the most important quality. In other words, the supposedly more pragmatic Republicans think it’s more important to have a candidate with experience in the current political system than it is to have a candidate who can beat Obama. That’s what causes the great divide between the GOP base and its representatives in Washington.
In the same vein, look who a PAC that formerly supported Michelle Bachmann is now supporting, as reported in the National Journal yesterday:
It’s hardly news that a super PAC would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Except the super PAC that’s doing so isn’t Restore Our Future, run by former Romney aides and responsible for several million dollars worth of anti-Newt Gingrich and anti-Rick Santorum independent expenditures since December.
No, it’s conservative super PAC Citizens for a Working America, which tonight reported making an independent expenditure of $455,000 to fund pro-Romney television ads in South Carolina, federal records indicate.
This follows a $475,000 pro-Romney television ad buy by the group in late December….
Citizens for a Working America PAC previously supported Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential candidacy before switching its allegiance to Romney.
Boy, those rigidly ideological Tea Partiers really are devious! They are such fanatics they are willing to imitate practical political pragmatists in order to achieve their goals.
