Thanks for bringing this to may attention. Somehow over the past week I've read more of Workers' Vanguard than the NY Times.
I agree with part of the article's commentary. The depiction of the Tea Party as a "media event" with a base of conservatives rather than a newly politicized, revanchist upsurge, is in line with my thinking.
Other findings seem to contradict the Times' earlier surveys and there doesn't seem to be link to the actual data, so it's hard to judge.
If the article's claim that the views on the economy in the country have shifted rightward, then perhaps part of the blame can be put to the way the left has framed its struggle against the Tea Party.
On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Joanne Landy <joanne.landy at igc.org> wrote:
> Bhaskar, what do you make of the piece by David Campbell and Robert Putnam
> in today's New York Times, "Crashing the Tea Party," http://nyti.ms/pFHk5rwhich argues that Tea Partiers "are overwhelmingly white, but even compared
> to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks
> long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do."
> --Joanne
>