“Nearly half of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party movement, putting it in the same company as the Democratic and Republican parties, according to a new national poll…

“The people questioned for the poll who say they have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party is 47%, up four points from December and an increase of 21 points from January 2010. That number is virtually identical to the 48% unfavorable ratings for both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the same poll.

“‘This is the first time that a CNN poll has shown the Tea Party’s unfavorable ratings as high as those of the two major parties,’ said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. ‘It looks like the rise in the movement’s unfavorable rating has come mostly among people who make less than $50,000.'”

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“As Democrats accuse Republican congressional leaders of being co-opted by the Tea Party in the federal budget negotiations, a new survey shows that half of all conservative voters ardently support the movement.

“The University of Washington poll suggests that the popularity of the Tea Party movement is wider than many political strategists have estimated. And it bolsters perceptions of Democrats and others that Tea Party supporters are as conservative about social and policy issues as they are about the Tea Party’s fiscal principles…

“Among non-Tea Party conservatives, 53 percent said they hope Obama’s policies succeed; 32 percent hope for failure and 15 percent expressed no preference. Sentiments among Tea Party backers were far more hostile: 76 percent of them want Obama’s policies to fail; 18 percent want them to succeed, and only 6 percent declined to say…

“‘The biggest thing that emerges, to me, is this rift among conservatives that they are going to have to confront,’ said University of Washington professor Christopher Parker, who oversaw the survey for the school’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality. ‘We suspected people in the Tea Party are going to be more pro-birther, etc., about Obama. But the gap when it comes to wanting to see his policies fail is huge. If you call yourself a patriot and you want to see the president fail, even if you don’t like him, how patriotic is that? It’s really paradoxical.'”

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Click the image to watch.

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Via Reason TV.