The intersection of tea party and religion
Jamshid Ghazi Askar looks a bit closer at the PEW poll that showed 44 percent of White Evangelicals agreeing with the Tea Party while only 8 percent disagree.
The study further reveals that tea party supporters are much more likely than the average voter to list religion as the determinative factor for their stances on major social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Robert Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, blogged on the Huffington Post that the new Pew results confirm the findings of PRRI’s American Values survey from the fall of 2010.
“The Tea Party rank and file are not in fact secular libertarians but are social conservatives largely drawn from the ranks of the Christian Right,” Jones
This is one of those moments when I like to point out how accurate Charles, Kilgore Trout & others who say that the Tea Party is just a cloaking device have been. While 48 percent of White Evangelicals say they are indifferent to the Tea Party in the poll, it really points out the strong correlation between religion and the current hard core 12-16 percent of the Tea Party GOP base that now runs the Republican party for all intents and purposes.