A new Democratic meme: “Tea Partiers support raising the minimum wage”
This article about Chuck Schumer’s plans to undermine the Tea Party is mostly a big yawn:
“The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite, plutocrats like the Koch Brothers want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants,” [Schumer] will say.
Schumer will argue Democrats must defend popular government programs, such as extended unemployment benefits and student loan subsidies, to persuade Tea Party voters they could benefit from federal programs.
“The average Tea Party member, like the average American, likes government run Medicare, likes government built highways and water and sewer lines, likes government support for education, both higher and lower,” he will say.
Yada yada yada.
First there was the “Tea Party is racist” lie. Then the IRS attack on the Tea Party. Now the “we’re your buddies and we have your best interest at heart; the Koch Brothers are not and don’t” approach from Schumer, who could promise most Tea Partiers the moon and they wouldn’t care.
This is what caught my eye from the article:
Democratic pollsters say a majority of Tea Party voters support increasing the minimum wage, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will address later this year.
“What the senator is getting at is, they’re very populist, and they are hard-pressed economically,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said of Tea Party voters. “So I think there is an interesting point right now where Democrats can lay out an economic agenda that really pressures the Tea Party leaders.”
Lake said Schumer and other Democratic leaders would be hard pressed to convince Tea Party voters to embrace big government, but they could push a populist economic agenda that resonates with them.
“A majority of Tea Partiers do support raising the minimum wage. They like to stand up for the little guy,” she said.
That would certainly surprise me, although I suppose anything’s possible. But I wondered what this was based on; the article didn’t say.
What I found when I researched it was that “Tea Partiers support raising the minimum wage” is a popular new Democratic meme, seemingly without much foundation. It appears to have started a few weeks ago on—where else?—MSNBC:
…[F]ormer congressman and frequent MSNBC contributor Harold Ford stated, “Chuck Todd said the majority of Tea Party members support an increase in the minimum wage.”…
…Margaret Carlson makes the statement that there are a “majority of Tea Party Activists who are for an increase in the minimum wage.”
In the case of both statements, Ford’s and Carlson’s, no survey or formal data was referenced. Efforts to contact Ford, Carlson, and Chuck Todd for verification or validation of these claims have met with no response…
In fact, TheBlaze did find one minimum wage survey that mentions the opinions of Tea Party members. The polling, done by the Public Religion Research Institute in November of 2013, found that 57% of Tea Partiers opposed raising the minimum wage.
And here’s a Pew poll from August of 2013 that also supports the idea that Tea Partiers do not favor raising the minimum wage:
Tea Party Republicans (32% favor) are far less likely than those who do not agree with the Tea Party (60%) to support raising the minimum wage.
According to the same poll, 50% of Republicans overall favor raising the minimum wage, while 47% oppose. Who are those Republicans who favor it? The less well-educated, and those with lower incomes. Perhaps Schumer is confusing “less-well-educated” and “lower income” with “Tea Party members.”
Then again, perhaps he’s just making s*** up.
That’s what the Tea Party gets for dropping their insurgent popular movement for the distraction of a few elected offices.
The Tea Party should have been making progress non-stop defining themselves, setting values, and changing America’s norms on the ground as a proper Marxist-method activist popular movement.
Instead, they sold out the necessary movement for a few seats in Congress, and now they’re being defined by the Democrats and used to advance the Democrats agenda in the social-political arena.
It’s the Tea Party’s own fault.
Come, now, neo-neo; of Course TeaPartiers support raising the minimum wage! We’re raaaaacists, remember, and we know Know KNOW that raising the minimum wage will abso-positive-lutely insure that Black kids will not be hired.
I hope someone is crunching the numbers on whether the proposed minimum wage increase will cover the extra expenses caused by Obamacare.
Maybe they should also mention that some minimum wage workers might have already gotten pay increases if the Dems hadn’t made it so damned hard for employers to figure out what their costs would be over the next few years due to Obamacare, EPA regulations, etc.
A deliberate, conscious lie, calculated to foment the illusion that even your ally, the Tea Party, is on board, so why aren’t *you*? The idea is to give the appearance of momentum to make it appear more and more inevitable, and to gather in gullible support along the way.
Well, *I* support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. What’s that you say, you’ll also agree on a $15 an hour minimum wage? Well, I’m sure not going to lose the compassion contest to a wimp like you —
*I* will support raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour. What’s that you say, you’ll also agree on a $20 an hour minimum wage? Well, I’m sure not going to lose the compassion contest to a wimp like you —
*I* will support raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour. What’s that you say, you’ll also agree on a $25 an hour minimum wage? Well, I’m sure not going to lose the compassion contest to a wimp like you —
ad infinitum. No concern for ripple effects, for jobs lost, for the fact that most people move upward out of minimum wage jobs fairly quickly.
At one time, in my callow days, I’d have assumed that such people were naive and not taking certain factors into account. But these Harvard and other fancy-shmancy school graduates are perfectly aware of the countervailing factors. It’s all political tactics/strategy, with no concern for the long-term effects of the measure.
Sigh. Preaching to the converted here anyway. See ya’s . . .
The minimum wage law is actually a minimum skills law. If you don’t have the skill and talent to produce goods and services worth the minimum wage, you will not be hired. The minimum wage simply makes unskilled or low skilled people unemployable, The Democratss, of course, need a permanent economic underclass to vote for them.
Increasing the minimum wage by forcefully redistributing money and power from politicians and putting a 90% tax on Hollywood…. probably yea.
Raising the minimum wage bny forcing companies to pay more cra taxes to the Democrats? no.
Democrats will do all that they can to undermine the Tea Party and reduce its ability to attract disaffected voters. That is because they rightly understand that the Tea Party has the potential to be a far greater threat to democrat dominance than the collaborating GOP will ever be.
I’m a Tea Partier, and I am purely amazed at all the stuff that we are constantly being said to believe/accused of being in favor of …
Sheesh, and it is actually so very simple: fiscal responsibility, strict adherence to the Constitution, and free markets. Nothing more, nothing less.
All else is quibbling over trivia. Amusing, and sometimes people feel quite passionate about it – but next to those three principles – trivial.
That’s what the Tea Party gets for dropping their insurgent popular movement for the distraction of a few elected offices.
This is a pretty stupid comment, Eric.
You’ve already been notified concerning the IRS suppression of the Tea Party and yet you desire to keep up your Marxist Method acting and propaganda.
If you think your popular movement is going to get started like that, think again.
Don’t try the usual bullshit. It may work against Marxists because they are stupid cattle trained to be prodded by the authoritarians, but be mindful of where you currently sit and why.
So MSNBC makes stuff up out of whole cloth, and Schumer is deluded enough to believe it uncritically. Yep…that sounds about right.
Also, “…leaders of the Tea Party elite…” (?!?)
Do we have leaders? Maybe, kinda, sort-of Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin. Are they plutocrats? No…no, they aren’t.
The Koch brothers are libertarians, by all I’ve heard. Leave it to Schumer to get it wrong!
By the way, when did you add the Twitter share app? I was thinking you needed one!
Matt_SE, 9:21 pm — “So MSNBC makes stuff up out of whole cloth, and Schumer is deluded enough to believe it uncritically.”
It’s not Schumer actually believing it; it’s Schumer knowingly parroting the talking point du jour, not because it’s acccurate or inaccurate, but because it does the job du jour, which is to cause people to cast a wary eye at Tea Party people.
Neither Schumer nor other leftie types like Pelosi or Reid or Biden believe half the garbage they spew (critically or uncritically) — but they consciously spew it as part and parcel of a long term strategy. Once we good guys internalize that, we may afford ourselves a clearer idea of what’s going on and maybe even what we need to begin to do about it.
Sgt. Mom: “Sheesh, and it is actually so very simple: fiscal responsibility, strict adherence to the Constitution, and free markets. Nothing more, nothing less.
All else is quibbling over trivia. Amusing, and sometimes people feel quite passionate about it — but next to those three principles — trivial.”
Exactly! Nothing more. Anyone who doesn’t understand that does not understand the TEA Party.
Ymarsakar: don’t mind the troll.
The Left rediverted reserves and forces from college campuses to the IRS witch hunt to suppress American patriots, which just happened to include the Tea Party organizers and their 501 funding scheme.
It was not particularly important, strategically, to defend the banning of ROTC on college campuses, thus Eric’s victory, if tactical victory it was, in terms of pushing back on the banning of ROTC, did not change the strategic space. Defunding the Tea Party and poisoning the grass roots, was far more strategically important than defending the clamp on ROTC entrance. After all, Obama or another future Demoncrat President can merely start up another war and get those ROTC graduates killed on the spot, with no worse consequence than a slight MSM expenditure of air and artillery support. If they want to get rid of defections on college campuses, they can get rid of them permanently using their new power. The old limitations meant that they needed to partition and segregate military thinking from the civilian pot flowers being indoctrinated on the campus.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/10/01/report-did-eric-holder-participate-in-armed-occupation-of-columbia-rotc-office/
They have better and more efficient new weapons to use in the war. The old ones are being phased out.
You should have been told during individual warrior training not to attempt to push down the achievements and efforts of other people, merely to elevate your own status. While martial arts instructors are always out to get ahead of their competition and will often comment on how other schools’ teaching material is inferior, it is much better PR to highlight only the positives of one’s own curriculum instead of making one’s own business look better by trashing the competition.
Without the Tea Party absorbing so much artillery and bombs dropped by the Regime, Eric’s Community Marxist Method would have been primaried and focus fired on (ROTC campaign). After the battle has been over and the front which the enemy reinforced and diverted all air and artillery support to destroy, Eric may think his own achievements are superior at the expense of the other fighters in this war. I doubt the Tea Party’s funding organization will support your pet projects given your PR take Eric. I know I’m considering cutting you off from my end, at least. While I’m usually tolerant of allowing individual groups to fight their war the way they prefer it, if you attempt to fire on friendlies in order to bolster your own campaign, I will respond appropriately. And those who think like me or have common aligned interest, will do similarly.
Remember what happened to Horo. Don’t end up like him.
One wonders if leftists are so far gone that they simply don’t grasp the difference between infrastructure and long-term support of working-age adults with sound limbs and minds, much less why someone might have differing feelings about supporting these two propositions with tax money.
Nah.
I hate that “highways and sewer lines” straw man argument.
For a feckless group of extremist losers that is not even and official political party, has no conventions and runs no candidates, the Tea Party still collects more attention that you’d think it merits….
If things are the way “everyone says” they are.
Tea Partiers support addressing corruption, including diverse distortions of the market which have lead to progressive cost of living unsupported by economic development. They know that this was accomplished through authoritarian and affiliated intervention, and have correctly concluded that reform will only occur through mitigating the causes.
Anyway, raising the minimum wage will simply restart the bubble economics which inevitable bursts every decade or so. The issue is cost of living which varies by local and regional development. The Democrats know this but are stymied by the consequences of near-term development fostered by “great society” initiatives, and the population control protocol (e.g. abortion) which has failed to sufficiently reduce the problem set to a manageable clump of cells.