Rift in the Right: Many Conservatives Reject the Tea Party's Paranoid Views

When you think of the word "conservative," what comes to mind? Did you say the Tea Party? Well, if you did, you'd only be half-right. That's because 51 percent of self-identified conservatives do not strongly identify with the Tea Party, and strong majorities within that non-Tea Party contingent reject some of the Tea Party movement's signature sentiments, according to a new study by the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality -- such as the notion that President Barack Obama is "destroying" America. Yet despite their rejection by the conservative mainstream, Tea Party leaders appear to control the Republican Party agenda.

Among Tea Party-aligned conservatives, 71 percent said that Obama was "destroying the country." Only six percent of those conservatives not strongly supportive to the Tea Party movement agreed with the statement, suggesting, according to a statement issued by institute, that the tea party is taking its philosophy in directions far more extreme than those of average conservatives." In other areas, the contrast was similarly stark. A whopping 76 percent of Tea Party conservatives said they wanted Obama's policies to fail, compared with (a still troubling) 32 percent of more mainstream conservatives.

And why do all those Tea Partiers want those policies to fail? Because they're perceived, somehow, as "socialist," despite the corporation-friendly nature of so-called financial reform, or a health-care reform plan rooted in the private sector. Three-quarters of Tea Party conservatives -- 76 percent -- told survey-takers that Obama's policies were pushing the country toward socialism. While mainstream conservatives more reticent to cry "socialism," 40  percent of them agreed with the Tea Partiers on that claim.

When it came to the conspiracy theories that fuel the Tea Party -- tropes about Obama's religion and place of birth -- the gap narrowed, but remained significant.

Despite the president's well-documented Christian faith, 27 percent of Tea Party-identified conservatives said the president was a practicing Muslim, compared to 16 percent of mainstream conservatives. Among mainstream conservatives, 46 percent agreed that the president is a practicing Christian, while only 27 percent of Tea Party conservatives agreed. 

And despite Obama's release, during the presidential campaign, of documentation of his birth in Hawaii, only 40 percent of Tea Party conservatives believe the information on his certificate of live birth, compared with a slim majority -- 55 percent -- of mainstream conservatives.

Since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency, the Republican Party has become a nearly monolithically conservative party, a reflection of the party's takeover by the religious right in 1979. Gone are the "Rockefeller Republicans" -- politicians and their followers who were fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

So when we speak today of the conservative movement, we're essentially talking about the GOP -- which means that a rupture in the conservative movement, as revealed in the University of Washington data, could signal a rift in the Republican Party not unlike the one that launched the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., in 1964. While the result of that single race was disastrous for the G.O.P., it set the stage for Reagan's ascent 16 years later. And given the speed with which the Tea Party movement sprang in response to the election of the nation's first African-American president, if that acceleration maintains its momentum, could the G.O.P. become the Grand New Tea Party in four or eight years' time?