The following post by TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira is cross-posted from Think Progress:
It’s widely acknowledged that the Democrats have a heavy lift going into the 2014 election, despite the continued decline in Republican Party favorability brought on by the shutdown, their extreme rhetoric and their single-minded devotion to undermining effective governance. However, regardless of the outcome in 2014, it seems likely that the GOP will be increasingly burdened by warfare between its totally intransigent Tea Party faction and “establishment”, business-oriented Republicans in and around Washington.
That’s a recipe for increased unpopularity going into the 2016 Presidential cycle. But a new poll suggests it might be more significant than that: an opportunity for the Democrats to make historic, devastating inroads into the Republican base.
How bad could 2016 be for Republicans? Pretty bad. Start with the likelihood that minorities, who voted 80 percent for Obama, will increase by 2 points to 30 percent of voters. Add to that the continued growth of heavily Democratic Millennial generation voters within the electorate, whose numbers will increase by about 4 million a year. By the 2016 election, Millennials should be about 36 percent of eligible voters and roughly a third of actual voters. That’s quite a tail wind for whomever the Democratic nominee may be.
But what about white voters? That’s where Obama was weakest, especially among white working class voters, whom he lost by 25 points. Won’t those kind of margins prevent a truly crushing defeat for the GOP in 2016?
Not necessarily.
The increasingly extreme and factionalized Republican party is suffering image erosion across the board, including among white voters. It’s also scaring white seniors and white working class voters, in particular, with its aggressive calls for cutting entitlements. This will likely lead a considerable number of white voters who backed Romney in 2012 to consider switching sides in 2016.
Will the Democrats be able to take advantage of this opening? We can’t say for sure, but consider that Hillary Clinton, the most likely nominee at this point, has a track record of appealing to white working class voters and in early polls has been cutting Obama’s deficit among whites nationally and in key states. That raises the possibility that Democrats could make progress in 2016 toward a decades-long aspiration: a Bobby Kennedy-style coalition that unites minorities, young people, and educated liberals with working class whites.
That progress would not have to be large-scale to create a lop-sided loss for the GOP. If Hillary Clinton simply matched Obama’s modest performance among working class whites (an 18 point deficit) that, combined with expected levels of demographic change, would be enough for her to exceed Obama’s overall victory margin in 2008. And if Clinton could match Obama’s 2008 performance among college-educated white women (a 5 point advantage), for whom her candidacy should have special appeal, she would triumph by 10 points, a huge gap in Presidential elections and the largest margin since Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984.
One reaction to this scenario might be: college-educated white women, sure, but how can a Democrat, even Hillary Clinton, reach a white working class split from the increasingly diverse Democratic party by ethnic and class divisions? As it turns out, most of the white working class is much more open-minded than many think.
Take a look at the results from a new survey by CAP and PolicyLink on Americans’ reactions to rising diversity. The poll found that, by and large, positive sentiments about opportunities from rising diversity tended to outweigh negative concerns about rising diversity — even among working class whites.
As the table below shows, Americans overall expressed majority agreement with six of eight statements about these opportunities, though there was considerable demographic variation in level of agreement. But despite this variation, it is nevertheless striking that white working class (non-college) respondents also agreed with every one of those six statements:

Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the white working class agreed that “Americans will learn more from one another and be enriched by exposure to many different cultures.” The same number agreed that “Aabigger, more diverse workforce will lead to more economic growth.” 62 percent agreed that “diverse workplaces and schools will help make American businesses more innovative and competitive.” 58 percent agreed that “people will become more accepting of their differences and more willing to find common ground.” 57 percent agreed that “with more diverse people working and living together, discrimination will decrease.” Finally, 52 percent agreed that “the entry of new people into the American workforce will increase our tax base and help support our retiree population”.
This does not sound like a demographic whose future lies with the lily-white Tea Party. The point becomes especially clear when you look at younger whites; white working class Millennials are significantly more open to rising diversity than the white working class as a whole. For example, 75 percent of white working class Millennials think Americans will be enriched by exposure to many cultures and 73 percent believe a bigger, more diverse workforce will lead to more economic growth.
These data indicate that there is real potential for a breakthrough among the white working class in 2016. Whether Hillary Clinton (or any other Democrat) can realize that potential remains to be seen. But if they can do so, the GOP could suffer an historic defeat.

For an interesting take on an important socio-economic trend that seems to be accelerating,” read “ALICE Americans, slipping out of the middle class” by Andre Cherny, president and co-founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Writing at WaPo Opinions, Cherny observes:

Americans have traditionally divided the country into three bands of income: rich, poor and a broad middle class in which, despite the protestations of statisticians, almost all Americans felt membership. But the distinct, cohesive middle class of the past is being cleaved in two. Last month the Census Bureau released new data pegging the median U.S. household income at $51,017. That income level is the new dividing line in American life and politics. Those roughly above that line constitute what is left of the traditional American middle class. Those living below that line, but above poverty, are the ALICE class.

Cherny explains that ALICE is an acronym for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed.” He adds that “ALICE Americans live on the jagged edge of the middle class. But by virtue of their economic situation and outlook on the future, they are becoming as distinct from the relatively more comfortable parts of the middle class as they are from those living in poverty.”
Some might prefer to call this group the “lower middle class.” Whatever you prefer to call it, you cn understand why this is a potentially volatile demographic in terms of voting. Here’s where the political volatility comes in:

Americans have traditionally divided the country into three bands of income: rich, poor and a broad middle class in which, despite the protestations of statisticians, almost all Americans felt membership. But the distinct, cohesive middle class of the past is being cleaved in two. Last month the Census Bureau released new data pegging the median U.S. household income at $51,017. That income level is the new dividing line in American life and politics. Those roughly above that line constitute what is left of the traditional American middle class. Those living below that line, but above poverty, are the ALICE class.
For most of the past 50 years, the income growth lines for the middle 20 percent of Americans and the 20 percent right below them tracked one another. A unified middle class rose and fell together. But increasingly over the past decade, these lines have diverged and a new income gap has grown. While the financial situation for both the bottom 20 percent and the middle of the middle class has stabilized over the past couple of years, the income of the 20 percent in between has continued to fall at such a rate that, as of 2012, their total income growth since 1967 is roughly 60 percent of those below or above them.
Working harder and yet caught between those in poverty who receive government support and a stable, if not thriving, middle class, the ALICE class’s resentments and disappointments continue to grow. The latest survey from the Conference Board shows consumer confidence has sharply risen over the past couple of years for those making more than $50,000. It is has even ticked up for those making less than $35,000. But it has tumbled for those making $35,000 to $50,000. During past periods of recovery, the lower and upper halves of the middle class shared the same level of economic optimism. At some points this year, ALICE Americans have shown 40 percent less confidence than Americans earning more than $50,000 — a historically large gap…Today, their median net worth is only two-thirds of what it was in 1989….the floor has dropped out from under the ALICE class.

Clearly, this is not a group that will have much tolerance for obstruction of needed economic reforms by a party which appears to be driven more by tax breaks for the wealthy than anything else. Hard to see them voting Republican in 2014. However, if they get no substantial relief by 2016, all bets about their political proclivities are off.
Cherny argues that “asset-building is the ladder of opportunity” is the policy principle Dems should address to secure the votes of this demographic. Further, he suggests “An ALICE agenda — including a refundable Saver’s Credit, matching grants for 529 accounts, reduced penalties for savings among those on food stamps and universal children’s savings accounts — could reasonably fit in the platform of either Democrats or Republicans.”
Cherny concludes, “They were trampled in the Bush years; they are still waiting for an upturn during the Obama years. They are up for grabs, looking for leaders who will rebuild what once was a single, surging American middle class.” For all of the talk about the “endangered middle class,” Dems would do well to pay particular attention to advancing reforms for this subgroup of potentially volatile voters.

At the Daily Beast Michael Tomasky calls out the myth that there is a civil war in the GOP between arch conservatives and moderates. As Tomasky explains:

The more I think about this Republican “civil war,” the less it looks like war to me. It often gives the appearance of being war because these Tea Party people march into the arena with a lot of fire, brimstone, and kindred pyrotechnics that suggest conflict. But what, really, in hard policy terms, are these two sides arguing about? Practically nothing. It’s a disagreement chiefly over tactics and intensity. That’s a crucial point, and so much of the media don’t understand it. But I’m here to tell you, whenever you read an article that makes a lot of hay about this “war” and then goes on to describe the Republican factions as “moderate” and “conservative,” turn the page or click away. You are either in the hands of an idiot or someone intentionally misleading you.
What’s going on presents many of the outward signs of political warfare. Insurgent radical extremists are challenging already very conservative incumbents whose thought and deed crimes are that they are conservative only 80- or 90-something percent of the time instead of 100…Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), American Conservative Union 2012 rating of 92, being challenged? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell? He got 100 percent in 2012!…

Tomasky adds that “a real war has two sides who believe different things and are willing to fight to the death for them. In this war, that description applies only to one side.” Further,

This…skirmish, let’s call it, is between radicals and conservatives. (It certainly doesn’t involve moderates; there are roughly four moderate Republicans in Congress, depending on how you count, out of 278.) The conservatives, the more traditional conservatives such as John McCain, Orrin Hatch, and many others in the Senate, and House Speaker John Boehner, could be a force if they wanted to. But by and large, they’ve refused to be.

Tomasky explains further that ” the conservatives and the radicals only really split on two occasions.”:

One was the fiscal cliff deal as 2013 started. In the House, 85 Republicans backed that deal and 151 voted against it. In the Senate, the vote was 89-8; 40 Republicans backed and five opposed. (Three Democrats opposed it because the tax-increase threshold went too high, from the expected $250,000 per household to $400,000.) The second was the vote we just had to reopen the government and raise the debt limit. That, of course, passed the House by a comfortable margin, with the support of 87 Republicans, while 144 opposed. The vote in the Senate was 81-18, with 27 Republicans voting aye and 18 nay.
That’s it. Interestingly, those two votes show us a radical caucus in the Senate that grew in 10 months from five to 18, while in the House, the radicals have outnumbered the conservatives in a remarkably consistent way. But those are the only diversions from party unity. On all other major matters, matters of policy–Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, cap and trade in the House–there is no disagreement. Everyone, or nearly everyone, votes no. The only really important votes on which these two sides disagree are the votes that threaten fiscal calamity. So that’s all the conservatives stand for. Elect me, and at five minutes ’til midnight, I’ll stand courageously against global economic cataclysm!

Noting that “An October 7 Washington Post-ABC poll found that just 52 percent of Republicans approved of how Republicans were handling the budget negotiations,” Tomasky explains:

… they might as well be zero, for they effectively have no representation. The regular conservatives–most conspicuously the craven Boehner, but all the others, too–did nothing to represent these people until the last possible second, and until the radicals demonstrated conclusively that they couldn’t pull off defunding Obamacare…Think about that. Half of one of our major political parties, constituting many millions of citizens, barely has a voice in Washington. If they did have a voice, none of this late madness would have happened. But the legislators who ostensibly represent them are cowards, kittens, balled up in the corner.

Some ‘Civil War.’ As Tomasky concludes, “it says a great deal about the character of the Republican Party, and especially of the conservatives. History will remember.”

The following article is by Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps:
Our recent work for Democracy Corps‘ Republican Party Project has provided a deep and serious look inside the GOP. For all that holds the party together — disgust with President Obama and big government, rejection of taxes and regulations, etc. — we find serious fractures within the Republican Party. While individual representatives in very red districts will be able to hold on to their seats, the Republican Party must eventually reconcile its now deeply divided base.
Evangelical Republicans — a third of the GOP base — are consumed by social issues such as gay marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. They view their insular communities as being under serious threat from outside forces that bring “culture rot” into their homes, schools, and towns. As a result, social issues are at the center of their politics. Non-Evangelical, Tea Party Republicans — a quarter of the GOP base — are not interested in the social issues that drive Evangelicals, and they worry that social issues serve only to fracture the party. The alliance between the two groups is tenuous and uneasy. Moderate Republicans — a quarter of GOP partisans — are very conscious that they are a minority within the party. They have become increasingly uncomfortable with positions held by the conservative majority of Evangelicals and Tea Party Republicans. Their distance begins with social issues, like gay marriage and homosexuality, but it is also evident in their positions on immigration and climate change.
As our focus groups reveal, Evangelicals see “culture rot” as the biggest threat to the country–and acceptance of homosexuals is central to their critique of the U.S. today. It feels invasive and inescapable — on TV and in schools:

Like it’s a normal way of life. There’s a minority of people out there are homosexual, but by watching TV, you’d think everybody’s that way. And that’s the way they portray it. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)
Somebody’s got to say “the gay agenda.” That gets thrown around, a lot–that there’s this vast conspiracy of gays that are trying to push this. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)
My daughter’s only one, and I already am making plans for her not to go to school and have that [homosexuals] in her life, because it’s not – Not only that it’s not just something that I agree with, but it’s not something that should have to be forced down her throat. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs)
It’s hard when the school is directly opposing what you’re trying to teach your kids. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

But in stark contrast, Tea Party Republicans are more apt to say, “Who cares?” about gay marriage.

Who cares? (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)
I don’t want the government telling me who I’m sleeping with or whatever in my bedroom, so I just don’t think it’s the government’s business. (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)
I think it’s not important. I mean either way we have so many bigger issues to worry about. (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)
I don’t think the government as any say in it…I personally don’t agree with gay marriage, but I don’t think the government should say who can get married and who can’t. It’s not their business. (Tea Party man, Raleigh)

And they worry that social issues distract the Republican Party–or worse, divide it.

The government, the media, the news media, you know. Of course – it’s gay rights, it’s abortion… What we need to be focused on is the financial situation. All the rest of it, I think they’re throwing stuff out, they’re feeding it to the media. (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)
The government is feeding stuff to the media to get us talking and arguing about gay rights, about abortions and stuff. (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)
I think the Republicans have lost so many people to the Democratic Party because of social issues, because of pro-life and more open ideas where if we could eliminate that from the conversation I think we’d have an entirely different electorate. (Tea Party woman, Roanoke)

And moderates, in stark contrast to both, call the Tea Party “wacky.”

A little wacky. (Moderate woman, Raleigh)
Extreme. (Moderate woman, Raleigh)
It’s kind of, the Tea Party is being just as closed minded as the other group. (Moderate woman, Raleigh)
Idiots. (Moderate man, Colorado)
Just something doesn’t smell right. (Moderate man, Colorado)

And they believe the GOP needs to be more forward-looking. They are very conscious that this is not a party of the future.

I can’t sell my kids on this party. I agree with…some of their positions. But the stupid things… for instance, the rape crap they were saying… I can’t sell them on my party. These kids are smart, they know these stupid politicians are saying crap. And these guys are representing us and they show their ignorance often. And just shut their mouth and do – again, get out of our bedrooms, get out of our lives and do what they’re supposed to do. (Moderate man, Colorado Springs)
I think of a white 54-year-old man in a business suit. And my mom. (Moderate woman, Raleigh)
I just tend to be a little bit more moderate on social issues. However I’m a pretty staunch fiscal conservative so it’s kind of like at least among my peers there’s a change in kind of the conservative group. But it doesn’t necessarily seem like the Republican Party is changing with it. (Moderate woman, Raleigh)

How long can the GOP hold on to this uneasy coalition? Right now, the conservative majority of Evangelicals and Tea Party Republicans make up a majority in states and districts the GOP now controls. In Republican-controlled states, 22 percent are non-Evangelical Tea Party and 33 percent are Evangelical Republicans. In Republican-held districts, 30 percent are Evangelical Republicans, and 23 percent are non-Evangelical Tea Party. Moderate Republicans (many of whom are increasingly tempted to split their votes) are not required to hold these Republican-held jurisdictions. However, in the most vulnerable Republican battleground districts, we find that these fractures do matter.
Click here to read the full memo by Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Yesterday, President Obama renewed his own push for passage of comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship.
Portions of the pundit class continue to believe the immigration reform is barely hanging on life support. In fact, in the post-shutdown political environment, there are four major reasons to believe that the odds of Congressional passage of immigration reform have actually substantially increased:
Reason #1. The extreme Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has been marginalized. That is particularly true when it comes to the efficacy of their political judgment. For those Republicans who want to keep the Republican Party in the majority – or who occupy marginal seats and hope to be reelected — it’s a safe bet that fewer and fewer are taking political advice from the likes of Ted Cruz.
The Republican Party brand has sunk to all-time lows. In a post-shutdown Washington Post-ABC News poll, the percentage of voters holding unfavorable views of the Republican Party jumped to 67 percent. Fifty-two percent of the voters hold the GOP responsible for the shutdown, compared with only 31 percent who hold President Obama responsible.
And, of course, far from achieving their stated goal of defunding ObamaCare, they basically got nothing in exchange for spending massive amounts of the Party’s political capital.
Increasingly, many Republicans have come to the view that taking political advice from the Tea Party crowd is like taking investment advice from Bernie Madoff.
And many Republicans are coming to realize that hard-core opponents of immigration reform like Congressmen Steve King and Louie Gohmert are just not attractive to swing voters – especially not to suburban women.The fear of being tainted by the Tea Party has grown among moderate Republicans and those in marginal districts.
All of that has lessened the extremist clout within the GOP House caucus.
And it should also be acknowledged that the “shutdown the government – to hell with the debt ceiling” crowd is not entirely the same as the “round up all the immigrants” gang. Immigration reform has a good deal of support among Evangelical activists that might share Tea Party tendencies on other issues. That’s also true among a growing group of economic libertarians.
The business community provides most of the money to fuel the Republican political machine. And the business community – which very much wants comprehensive immigration reform (along with the Labor movement) – is furious with the Tea Party wing and is more ready than ever to challenge them – especially on immigration.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports that:
Some big-money Republican donors, frustrated by their party’s handling of the standoff over the debt ceiling and government shutdown, are stepping up their warnings to GOP leaders that they risk long-term damage to the party if they fail to pass immigration legislation.
Some donors say they are withholding political contributions from members of Congress who don’t support action on immigration, and many are calling top House leaders. Their hope is that the party can gain ground with Hispanic voters, make needed changes in immigration policy and offset some of the damage that polls show it is taking for the shutdown.
Reason #2. House Speaker John Boehner emerged from the shutdown battle with his support in the caucus in tact.
At the beginning of the shutdown one Boehner aide was quoted as saying that the Speaker had to let his Tea Party wing find out that the stove is hot by touch it. That’s exactly what Boehner did. Instead of just telling them the consequences of shutting down the government and threatening default over ObamaCare, he showed them. He let them run down their entire strategy, get nothing in return and suffer enormous political damage for their trouble.
Because Boehner stuck with the Tea Party wing to the bitter end, they joined in the standing ovation the GOP Caucus gave Boehner as he was negotiating the terms of surrender.

Read more…

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes some painful sense at HuffPo, where he opines:

Conservative Republicans have lost their fight over the shutdown and debt ceiling, and they probably won’t get major spending cuts in upcoming negotiations over the budget.
But they’re winning the big one: How the nation understands our biggest domestic problem.
They say the biggest problem is the size of government and the budget deficit.
In fact our biggest problem is the decline of the middle class and increasing ranks of the poor, while almost all the economic gains go to the top.

Reich goes on to note that “If the same percentage of Americans were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, today’s unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.” He adds “Meanwhile, 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. The real median household income continues to drop, and the number of Americans in poverty continues to rise.” In addition,

The triumph of right-wing Republicanism extends further. Failure to reach a budget agreement will restart the so-called “sequester” — automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that were passed in 2011 as a result of Congress’s last failure to agree on a budget.
These automatic cuts get tighter and tighter, year by year — squeezing almost everything the federal government does except for Social Security and Medicare. While about half the cuts come out of the defense budget, much of the rest come out of programs designed to help Americans in need: extended unemployment benefits; supplemental nutrition for women, infants and children; educational funding for schools in poor communities; Head Start; special education for students with learning disabilities; child-care subsidies for working families; heating assistance for poor families. The list goes on.
The biggest debate in Washington over the next few months will be whether to whack the federal budget deficit by cutting future entitlement spending and closing some tax loopholes, or go back to the sequester. Some choice.

Reich explains that, “The real triumph of the right has come in shaping the national conversation around the size of government and the budget deficit, against all reason. All of which is good reason why Dems should not wallow in triumphalism about recent opinion polls. Yet there is a way out of Republican gridlock, Reich believes. For starters:

The President and Democrats should re-frame the national conversation around widening inequality. They could start by demanding an increase in the minimum wage and a larger Earned Income Tax Credit. (The President doesn’t’ even have to wait for Congress to act. He can raise the minimum wage for government contractors through an executive order.)
Framing the central issue around jobs and inequality would make clear why it’s necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax loopholes (such as “carried interest,” which enables hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat their taxable income as capital gains).
It would explain why we need to invest more in education — including early-childhood as well as affordable higher education.
This framework would even make the Affordable Care Act more understandable – as a means for helping working families whose jobs are paying less or disappearing altogether, and therefore in constant danger of losing health insurance.

Reich concludes that “The Right’s success in generating this distraction is its greatest, and most insidious, triumph,” and it’s hard to argue with the point. By hammering Reich’s message points for Dems, however, Republican responsibility for government paralysis can be kept in the national spotlight through November 2014, when voters can hold them accountable.

The following article is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:
Keep in mind, Ted Cruz is mainstream in the Republican base. According to the latest national survey conducted for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, which fielded just last week, Ted Cruz is right at the center of a Republican Party that is majority Tea Party and Evangelical. Combined, these groups make up over half of Republican partisans, and comprise over 60 percent of the GOP when you include the religious observants.
Cruz is immensely popular with Tea Party adherents. Among this group, 75 percent give him a positive rating and half give him an intensely positive rating (over 75 on our 100-point scale.) His average rating among this group is a stunning 81.8 out of 100. While he is less well known among Evangelical Republicans, he is no less popular among those who identify him–40 percent give him a positive rating, a third are intensely favorable toward him. On average, Evangelicals give Cruz a rating of 75.9 out of 100.
By contrast, moderate Republicans, who make up just a quarter of the Republican Party, are split evenly–16 percent unfavorable, 18 percent favorable. His average rating among Moderates is just 51.0. And among all voters in the US, he has a quite negative rating and is known to about half the electorate. Just 18 percent of all voters give Cruz a favorable rating–and an average rating of just 39.7.
But even as pundits label Cruz as “fringe,” it is critical to remember that this is only true when talking about the national electorate. In his own party, there is nothing “fringe” about Ted Cruz. He is right at the center.

TDS Founding Editor William Galston has a Wall St. Journal op-ed that sheds fresh light on the post-shutdown tea party’s role in the Republican Party. Galston sees the tea party as a neo-Jacksonian force in the GOP, more concerned about the second amendment to the Constitution than the first, “suspicious of federal power, skeptical about do-gooding at home and abroad.” They are against federal taxes, “aroused, angry and above all fearful, in full revolt against a new elite–backed by the new American demography–that threatens its interests and scorns its values.” Galston adds:

…Stan Greenberg, a Democratic survey researcher whose focus groups with Macomb County Reagan Democrats in Michigan transformed political discourse in the 1980s, has recently released a similar study of the tea party. Supporters of the tea party, he finds, see President Obama as anti-Christian, and the president’s expansive use of executive authority evokes charges of “tyranny.” Mr. Obama, they believe, is pursuing a conscious strategy of building political support by increasing Americans’ dependence on government. A vast expansion of food stamps and disability programs and the push for immigration reform are key steps down that road.
But ObamaCare is the tipping point, the tea party believes. Unless the law is defunded, the land of limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility will be gone forever, and the new America, dominated by dependent minorities who assert their “rights” without accepting their responsibilities, will have no place for people like them.
For the tea party, ObamaCare is much more than a policy dispute; it is an existential struggle.

As for what survey data reveals about tea party attitudes, adds Galston:

.According to two benchmark surveys by the New York Times NYT -0.56% and the Public Religion Research Institute, tea-party supporters espouse an ensemble of conservative beliefs with special intensity. Fifty-eight percent think that minorities get too much attention from government, and 65% view immigrants as a burden on the country. Most of the respondents see President Obama as someone who doesn’t understand them and doesn’t share their values. In their eyes, he’s an extreme liberal whose policies consistently favor the poor. In fact, 92% believe that he is moving the country toward socialism.
Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The New York Times survey found the opposite. Only 26% of tea-party supporters regard themselves as working class, versus 34% of the general population; 50% identify as middle class (versus 40% nationally); and 15% consider themselves upper-middle class (versus 10% nationally). Twenty-three percent are college graduates, and an additional 14% have postgraduate training, versus 15% and 10%, respectively, for the overall population. Conversely, only 29% of tea-party supporters have just a high-school education or less, versus 47% for all adults.
Although some tea-party supporters are libertarian, most are not. The Public Religion Research Institute found that fully 47% regard themselves as members of the Christian right, and 55% believe that America is a Christian nation today–not just in the past. On hot-button social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, tea partiers are aligned with social conservatives. Seventy-one percent of tea-party supporters regard themselves as conservatives.

But they should not be considered a force entirely separate from the GOP, warns Galston:

Nor, finally, is the tea party an independent outside force putting pressure on Republicans, according to the survey. Fully 76% of its supporters either identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Rather, they are a dissident reform movement within the party, determined to move it back toward true conservatism after what they see as the apostasies of the Bush years and the outrages of the Obama administration.

Galston explains further that many tea party members “run low-wage businesses on narrow margins” and “they believe that they have no choice but to fight measures, such as ObamaCare, that reduce their flexibility and raise their costs–measures to which large corporations with deeper pockets can adjust.”
“It’s no coincidence that the strengthening influence of the tea party is driving a wedge between corporate America and the Republican Party,” concludes Galston.” Further, “It’s hard to see how the U.S. can govern itself unless corporate America pushes the Republican establishment to fight back against the tea party–or switches sides.”