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The University of Washington has a new poll of Tea Party members that breaks response data from core, highly dedicated adherents out from the responses from the more general category of sympathizers. It’s hardly surprising that the two groups are rather divergent in their views.

Bruce Bartlett comments:

A new University of Washington poll sheds light on these observations by separating TPM agnostics, who may somewhat approve or disapprove of the TPM, from those that strongly approve of it. Released on Tuesday, it sampled 1,695 Washington State voters—a large sample—and asked them to define themselves as strong TPM supporters (19% of the sample), those that somewhat approve or disapprove of it (26% of the sample), and those that strongly disapprove (27% of the sample; not included below).

What I think this poll shows is that taxes and spending are not by any means the only issues that define TPM members; they are largely united in being unsympathetic to African Americans, militant in their hostility toward illegal immigrants, and very conservative socially. At a minimum, these data throw cold water on the view that the TPM is essentially libertarian. Based on these data, I would say that TPM members have much more in common with social conservatives that welcome government intervention as long as it’s in support of their agenda.

What is happening is that the term “Tea Party” is being expanded to include a bunch of different groups who don’t tend to have much in common. The charitable way of viewing it is that the primary commonality is an opposition to government intervention, “intervention” here being rather loosely defined.

The Venn diagram I’m imagining has a few circles: traditional libertarians, the “black helicopters are coming to take my guns” bunch, social conservatives opposed to Obama and Democratic control of Congress, corporate-types who are looking for a more business-friendly market environment, Republicans looking for a political opportunity, etc. There’s a relatively small area where all these circles overlap, and it’s marked “Opposed to government intervention.”

A somewhat less charitable way of viewing the situation is that the area of overlap among all the various circles is instead marked “Don’t like where they see the country going.”

Either way, around all those circles is a dotted line marked “Tea Party”. It’s convenient for the media to characterize the movement in this way, because it simplifies their narrative. It is also convenient for most (if not all) of the groups involved, as it gives each group the appearance of being a popular movement that is more widespread than if it were considered on its own.

The downside is that the umbrella label papers over very real differences between the different constituencies. While Christian social conservatives may be opposed to this particular federal government, they tend to enthusiastically support social activism by the federal government when its beliefs match their own. It is hard to see how they form a meaningful coalition with traditional “government out of our bedrooms” libertarians.