Tea Parties Look Like America

Bill Kristol, writing in the Washington Examiner, has some interesting demographics about Tea Party protests:

“They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo, although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks.”

This is from today’s long (and on the whole not bad) USA Today article on the tea parties and tea partiers. But there’s something a little odd about that term “scattering.” That “scattering” is (as is suggested later in the same sentence) pretty hefty—23 percent of tea partiers are, according to the survey, non-white Anglos. How does this compare to the nation’s adults as a whole? They’re 25 percent non-white Anglos. So tea partiers are—in this as in other respects—a startlingly representative demographic group.

They look like real America, without the minority over-representation that the media and Democrats seem to think is required.

More importantly, they sound like the real America because they represent what most Americans are thinking.

However, there will always be critics, especially among RINOs like Sen. Lindsey Graham:

"The problem with the Tea Party, I think it's just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out." Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: "We don't have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats." Chortling, he added, "Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today."

That's just foolish. The Tea Parties have exhibited a more coherent vision for America than most Republican politicians have, and that's why they've been successful. Graham thinks you lead by going along with Democrat issues such as cap-and-tax and global warming hysteria. There's nothing Reaganesque about that.

 Reagan didn't win over Democrats by appealing to their issues, he won them over by presenting a positive image of what America could be and by championing more freedom for America and the world.  I don't hear Lindsey Graham doing any of that.

Reagan would sweep the field if he was a Republican candidate and would be a favorite of the Tea Party crowd.  Graham just wants to be loved by Democrats and the press.  His Republican Party would be a permanent minority struggling to be relevant in a Democrat-dominated country.