The South Florida Tea Party has apparently done some soul searching in the two and a half months since the 2012 elections and, upon reflection, has chosen a course correction that it hopes will put it back in good stead with voters. It has opted to try re-branding:
Jolted by the re-election of President Barack Obama, the defeat of congressional tea party icon Allen West and the cracking of Republican anti-tax orthodoxy during the recent federal budget showdown, the tea party movement is trying to rebrand and repackage itself in South Florida.
The South Florida Tea Party — the group that helped Marco Rubio launch his Senate bid and that hosted Donald Trump during his last flirtation with a presidential run — is shedding the words “tea party” as it undergoes a name change.
“We felt for branding reasons that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from certain organizations that have the name ‘tea party’ and we can’t control,” said Everett Wilkinson, leader of the organization that will now be called the National Liberty Federation.
The National Liberty Foundation? Oh, yeah. Much better.
The reality is, the problem they and their national cohorts face has nothing to do with branding. The movement is unpopular because the electorate does not like its underlying ideology, especially its advocacy of the sort of austerity policies that have stalled economic recovery in Europe.
It is not surprising then that the new NBC-Wall St. Journal poll found the tea party’s popularity at an all-time low.
Just 26 percent of American voters had a favorable view of the tea party, while nearly half, 47 percent, viewed it unfavorably. In fact, tea baggery is viewed even less favorably than the national Republican Party, which was under water by double digits in the poll, too, with a favorable/unfavorable rating of 26 to 49 percent. Democrats fared better with a plus-6 favorable/unfavorable rating, 44 to 38 percent.
The good news for liberals, not to mention the future stability of the middle class and the economic success of the United States, is that there is no chance they will ever come to see the situation any other way:
“We’re faced with a wave of negative impressions,” said Palm Beach County Tea Party member Richard Bock of West Palm Beach. “A lot of negative information, misinformation has been out for a very long time — racist, crazy, you’ve heard all this stuff.
“We recognize that it’s a communications failure on our part not to have successfully countered that message and make people understand that what brings people all together here is a belief in the principles.”
Yeah, that’s right. It is a “communications failure,” not your principles that turned voters off. Just keep believing that.
