From the liberal Washington Post.
Excerpt:
A majority of Republicans who agree with the tea party movement give House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) positive reviews for his role in debt negotiations in a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. The speaker’s high marks represent a crucial link between the highly energized political movement and the Republican establishment as attention pivots back to the 2012 election cycle.
[…]After Republicans cut a deal on Sunday reducing the deficit with spending cuts alone – a key GOP and tea party priority – there is little doubt that the tea party movement has emerged as a powerful and sustained force in national politics.
[…]Tea party Republicans are significantly more tuned in than others to the 2012 presidential contest, according to another survey. Overall, more than eight in 10 are closely following the campaign, said the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Some 42 percent of Republicans who strongly support the tea party said they’re following it “very closely,” roughly twice the number of Democrats (17 percent), independents (19 percent) and Republicans overall (21 percent) who say so.
Tea party Republicans make up nearly one-quarter of registered voters in swing states. While tea party Republicans make up 17 percent of registered voters in states that favored Obama by 10 points or more according to June and July Post-ABC polls, they make up 23 percent of voters in states decided by single digit margins. That’s identical to the 23 percent of voters in heavily McCain states who identify as tea party Republicans.
Elections matter. Make sure you start engaging your friends now.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I’m surprised they would be happy – a deal that only cuts 100B from a 1400B deficit seems like a drop in the bucket (I’m wondering if I have to go back and recheck – I know there are some automatic cuts if they can’t agree but it just didn’t seem like there was enough in the way of cutting to stem the tide of red ink)…I personally believe more cuts are necessary (big ones in defense spending alone as well as corporate welfare and the various human entitlements).
Additionally, I believe we need to let the Bush Jr. tax cuts expire for starters
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Letting the tax cuts expire will raise unemployment and have no impact on revenues.
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If only 17% of Democrats follow the campaign closely, why do so many of them seem to think they are qualified to have an opinion?
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@Jerry, Wintery Knight is right, we can’t let the tax cuts expire, the only way to increase government revenue today is to increase cuts. America has reached the point where adding taxes actually reduces revenue, because it’s resulting in job losses and tax evasion.
Wintery Knight said:Letting the tax cuts expire will raise unemployment.
This is true as it would be an immediate tax increase for businesses and they wouldn’t be able to continue business as usual without downsizing.
More tax cuts are needed. Even if companies don’t use the cuts to hire more people, companies still end up taking more of their money out of tax shelters and begin re-investing in the economy and paying taxes on that money. I agree with you Jerry that the deal seemed like a drop in the bucket because we need to cut programs as well (which is something the democrats don’t seem to want to do in any significant way). The bulk of income tax is getting eaten up by beurocracy.
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If it weren’t the case that companies are sitting on billions, making record profits, and increasing efficiencies while laying-off and/or not hiring I would be more inclined to believe the first portion of your statement but as it is the case that they have these breaks but are not hiring and/or laying off while making these record profits I believe negates your statement. Letting the breaks expire would force the companies to move the money to the more traditional shelters which do increase employment and tax revenues in a more indirect way (at least the tax-shelters I know of and use:)
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I did forget to mention that I’m still strongly in favor of much deeper cuts but I also believe it’s the republicans that don’t want to touch their sacred cows – defense and corporate entitlements which will have an impact at the polls as my father was going to vote for Bachman until all of this transpired the past couple of weeks, now he believes the tea-party has been overrun by people whose only interest is in servicing the large corporations and the military-industrial complex. (currently he doesn’t know who he will vote for)
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@ Jerry, You’re not serious, you can’t think that now would be a good time to start defunding the millitary? I’m sure your dad’s aware of what’s going on in the world. I mean sure we caught Osama, the troops should be home, I’m tottaly on board with that, but have we taken a good look at the condition over there? Not to mention Obama virtually declairing war on Israel. Um yeah, not only are we going to need weapons for ourselves, but we’re going to need surplus as we have in the past in our defence of Israel. Back to businesses, you think Donald Trump keeps his money in an 401K? Tax evasion is the complaint, when you say businesses are making profits and not paying taxes. That’s the problem, so lower their taxes so they pay them, instead of avoiding them, it’s worked in the past! Please see Wintery Knights blog: Thomas Sowell explains the historical effects of tax cuts http://networkedblogs.com/kKt4j
Also you seem to be under the impression (based on some of your earlier posts I’ve read). That America has got into this predicament only by overspending and that this began with the GOP under Bush. Wintery Knight wrote a blog entitled Does Obama have a plan?
http://networkedblogs.com/kOgBA where I posted a comment regarding how this mess came about.
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No, I believe all the overspending started with Reagan, not Bush.
As for defunding the military, yes, it has to start sometime and as we’re in one of the worst debt/deficit fiascos in recent history there couldn’t be a better time. As for declaring war on isreal, I think you’re being a bit overdramatic – simply calling for compromise as a starting point is far from declaring war. Do I personally think Isreal should give up any of those lands – no, not really but then I believe they should also have to live with the consequences – why should everyone else have to subsidize their decisions? If they can’t afford to keep those areas then they should rethink their strategies. If they believe they can afford to keep them, then kepe them, I don’t want to have to pay for – it has no strategic value to the US that I know of. As for weapons, we have more than enough to defend us and Isreal without having to spend more. I personally believe we should move to a much smaller military that focuses more on high tech, but either way we shouldn’t be spending as much as we do…I would like to know though why you believe we should justify spending more to kill other people than we spend to educate our own countrymen? I think too many people ignore history – we had a very small military budget pre-WWII and it took us approximately 4 years to become a super-power so there are many strategies we can take to keep a world-class military without spending ourselves in to bankrupcy.
As for Donald Trump and 401k’s, I’m not sure where you got that connection? Very odd…and you didn’t address my points of record profits, some of the lowest taxes in US history, numerous corporate deductions AND layoffs/depressed hiring. Add on top of that you claim because rich people will commit a crime (tax evasion) we should lower the temptation…so if I’m inclined to rape we should then force women to wear burqas to lessen that? Your logic is horribly flawed. Add on top of that, some of the USA’s most productive years had tax rates of 91%! So we have tax rates of 70 – 90% and we become the worlds leader in technology; we drop those brackets to 38% and all we have now is business men, lawyers, and patent trolls…so yes, I believe history screams that we need to start raising taxes and/or removing deductions/exemptions.
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