Paul Ryan Tops the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll

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Pajamas Media:

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that more than half (53 percent) of those who plan to vote in the Republican presidential primaries are self-described Tea Party voters. The preferences of Tea Party voters will therefore have a great influence on the selection of the Republican presidential nominee.

Moreover, a New York Times poll shows that 30 to 40 percent of Tea Party voters are either independents or Democrats, and the Hill writes that a poll conducted by a Republican outfit confirms the Times’s tally. Thus, even if a candidate were to squeak out the Republican nomination without widespread Tea Party support, he or she would suffer from a two-fold disadvantage in the general election: a large number of Republicans wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about their nominee, and those independents who are Tea Party voters — or who share Tea Party sympathies — wouldn’t be, either.

But despite the results of the 2010 election and the continued primacy of the three interconnected issues that most drove it (1. ObamaCare, 2. the economy, 3. excessive spending and debt), the importance of the Tea Party doesn’t yet seem to have fully take root in the calculations of commentators.

David Brooks writes that Mitch Daniels “would be the party’s strongest candidate for the presidency.” But because he seems skeptical that Daniels will run, Brooks says, “I really think it’s [already] down to [Tim] Pawlenty and [Mitt] Romney, of the people in front of us”; “it’s really down to these two sort of establishment figures.”

Ross Douthat writes that “the stronger President Obama looks …, the better Romney’s chances of being nominated.”

George Will writes that there are “at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon.” He lists, in order, Daniels, Haley Barbour, Jon Huntsman, Romney, and Pawlenty, and says that “the Republican winnowing process is [already] far advanced.”

But how much support do any of these candidates have in Tea Party circles? The 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll suggests that they have very little.