Americans view the Tea Party Less favorably than the IRS.

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Poll: The IRS Is More Popular With Americans Than The Tea Party



A surprising new Fox News poll has shown that Americans view the Tea Party less favorably than the Internal Revenue Service. This is amusing considering recent false claims from conservatives that 16,000 IRS agents are being hired to enforce the health care reform law, the most notable coming from Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich: “I suspect every Republican candidate will campaign on a promise to cut off all funding in January for the 16,000 IRS agents. You don’t need a health Gestapo in the United States.”

Favorable
Barack Obama....... 50%
IRS ............... 49%
Democratic Party.... 42%
Republican Party.... 40%
Tea Party........... 36%
Nancy Pelosi........ 29%
Harry Reid.......... 16%
Jon Boehner......... 12%

From FactCheck.org:

Q: Will the IRS hire 16,500 new agents to enforce the health care law?

A: No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties. The claim of 16,500 new agents stems from a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation.
http://www.alan.com/2010/04/09/poll-the-irs-is-more-popular-with-americans-than-the-tea-party/

[Initech]

1. Ha ha HA!!!!! Take that tea party!!!!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. And in related news...

Tea Party's purity push steers GOP to the right
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36274665/ns/politics/

WASHINGTON - The tea party's demands for ideological purity have caught some GOP presidential hopefuls off guard, forcing them to awkwardly defend past decisions as they watch hard-right rivals gain ground.

It's painfully ironic for some of the Republicans most often mentioned as possible challengers to President Barack Obama in 2012. Stances that gave them national attention and credibility are now being used as cudgels to attack them as wobbly centrists.

Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty, for instance, gained a reputation as a pragmatic governor of a Democratic-leaning state. But now conservatives are berating him for accepting federal stimulus funds that helped him close a budget gap.
--snip--
Such tensions are likely to complicate the Republican presidential picture for the next two years, said Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, who worked on Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. Potential GOP candidates are caught between two vital bases, he said: Wall Street's deep-pocketed pragmatic interests and the high-decibel, uncompromising views of the tea party.

GOP presidential hopefuls who can't figure out how to navigate that road, Lehane said, "will get run over."