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A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy?
An anonymous reader with a snippet from Politico: "A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers. Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative. However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn't, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said. Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him. 'I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,' Kahan wrote. 'But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the tea party,' he continued.'" More at the Independent Journal Review.
"This is only surprising if your idea of who supports the Tea Party segment of the Republican Party comes from MSNBC. Hint: most aren't social conservatives."
Perhaps even less surprising when you realize that the Tea Party itself did not identify with Republicans. It is true that they leaned somewhat conservative but there was a significant portion of liberals in their ranks, too.
The (modern) group that originally called itself the Tea Party was as fed up with the Republican Party as it was with the Democratic Party. It wasn't until later that the Republicans usurped their banner.
I'd be surprised too, as the Tea Baggers tend to think that climate change is some kind of made up science (Yale Climate Change Study).
However, that result is consistent with the other study which showed that people who hold a strong position only get more certain of that position as the get more information, regardless of what the information says. So you'd expect more scientifically-informed climate deniers to deny more strongly than less-informed client deniers.
It's also worth pointing out that the Tea Party movement as such has no position on climate change at all.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If you read a bit more than the review article you find that scores on the test of scientific literacy they used is highly correlated with years of education. Since the tea party is heavily skewed toward older white males you'd expect them to have more years of education than the general population. Years of education was not controlled for.
Yes indeed, this is how dirty politics works. Everyone votes for the whole pile of pork in order to keep the one program that actually benefits them personally.
The continuing resolution that reopened the government contained lots of pork, according to this. Another article talked about a spending increase of $1.2 billion. It's hard to tell, because the money is hidden in the final bill as amendments to previous legislation, saying things like "in place of the number X substitute bigger number Y."
This is a continuing resolution that is supposed to be continuing the previous budget until a new one can be worked out. And wasn't supposed to be negotiated at all. Senate Democrats balked at the first CR that contained extraneous legislation, but this one was just fine. Nobody wanted to deny the widow of Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) her $174,000 payout.
You've got it backwards. That astroturf "movement" was funded and assisted so that large numbers of people that opposed the regulations that Koch and the other funders disliked could be bussed in to protests to give an appearance of a lot of support. The people that organised the transport, media releases etc were not "Tea Partiers" themselves but professionals paid to create events. Most of the tea party was literally a rented crowd which is why it has no cohesion and nobody within doing much in the way of organising anything. Left alone they do not appear to be able to organise a drunken party in a brewery.
I'm not knocking the individuals who stand for whatever they do, but instead that it's a disorganised mob that cancel each other out and ultimately don't really stand for anything. They are a weird "only in America" footnote whose time passed once the adult supervision driving the busses decided to do something else.
The ironies are many, the largest of which are the strident calls for replacing the United States with the sort of fuedalistic system that the Boston tea party was a protest against. "Getting the government out of people's lives" really means letting the rich and powerful run a country without interference from the people - just like those English Lords could do.
"One of the biggest reasons the libertarian and Green Parties get glossed over is that about 80% of their platforms are functionally identical or compatible to existing platforms of other parties."
Just no. First, the Greens are primarily a one-issue party. And second, while there are a few vague similarities between Libertarian values and the Republican platform, they are not even remotely the same. Especially when you consider that even when it comes to those similarities, the Republicans over the last few decades have been almost all talk and no walk. 80% is way, WAY off. If you are measuring actions, rather than words, try 10%.
Not that I blame you personally. The Libertarian party is widely misunderstood, in part precisely because of misinformation from both the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats, in particular, have frequently characterized Libertarians as being "far right", when nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, it's not even close. The Republicans, on the other hand, simply try to marginalize the Libertarians, because the Libertarians really mean what the Republicans only pretend, when it comes to "smaller government". (But again, that's only a part of the Libertarian platform.)
"That might be more believable if the Tea Party had not challenged republicans who held safe seats in government during the primaries just to lose the general election to political adversaries. What you are claiming would require the republicans to actually defeat themselves in an attempt to make themselves win under a false pretense. That's a little like a bank robber asking the cops to drive the get away car at his next heist."
You are arguing against yourself, and and making MY argument for me. Tea Partiers running against Republicans? Then how could Republicans BE Tea Partiers? This is actually part of my own argument. The Republicans saw the writing on the wall. They saw they were getting stiff opposition so they leaned in the direction the wind was blowing. But even those Tea Party principles they claim to have adopted, they adopted in weakened form. And they only did so because they were being challenged by the Tea Party.
"I think the recent government shut down proves you wrong on this. It was ineffective action but if you paid attention to the contents of Ted Cruze's speeches or the speeches of the Tea Party members who were behind it, you would understand that they did it specifically because the people asked them too do something."
No shit. I repeat: they saw the writing on the wall, and saw that the American public was highly supportive of the Tea Party. So they do those things. There is no conflict or contradiction there with what I was saying. Example: Ron Paul ran on the Republican ticket, yet few people would mistake him for anything but a Libertarian (although he does hold a few typical Republican values that conflict with Libertarian values). On the other hand, I don't think anybody would mistake Ted Cruz for anything but a Republican.
"So you suggest that the republican party put on masks and pretended to be tea part members for some sort of gain. What type of gain have they received? what gain has the republicans received when it only divided the party showing the difference between the establishment and the tea party conservatives? Your own president marks a clear distinction between the two, so which is it? One in the same or two separate movements?"
I'm not "suggesting" it. It's a statement of fact. Look it up. They had to adopt "Tea Partier" principles or lose elections. It's that simple.