A survey shows that the Tea Partiers are mostly socially conservative. Well: duh.
* Nearly half (47%) also say they are part of the religious right or conservative Christian movement. Among the more than 8-in-10 (81%) who identify as Christian within the Tea Party movement, 57% also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement.
* They make up just 11% of the adult populationhalf the size of the conservative Christian movement (22%).
* They are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and less than 1-in-5 (18%) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.
* They are largely Republican partisans. More than three-quarters say they identify with (48%) or lean towards (28%) the Republican Party. More than 8-in-10 (83%) say they are voting for or leaning towards Republican candidates in their districts, and nearly three-quarters (74%) of this group report usually supporting Republican candidates.
They are the hardest of the hardest core and the notion that they care about actually cutting spending as a key priority when none of them will actually propose anything even faintly serious as a program of cuts is self-evident. Allahpundit is disappointed:
A single tear rolls down a socially centrist, fiscally conservative, atheist blogger’s cheek… [T]he tea party has in part simply been a way for conservative Republicans to rebrand themselves after souring on the GOP but with all the attention the movement’s gotten from libertarians, there’s a lingering question as to who really dominates when it comes to non-fiscal matters. The answer, it appears, is conservatives, not libertarians, which we should have known from the response to Beck’s religious rally on the Mall and the hero status accorded among most tea partiers to Jim DeMint, who was last seen insisting that you need a big God to have a small government.
And if you think Sarah Palin's cultists want to cut defense in any way any where, you need some therapy. Like Allahpundit, I wish there were a Tory party in America - socially centrist, fiscally badass. But there isn't. And the last place to look is the Tea Party.