Boiling Tea

From pollster John Zogby via The Huffington Post (of all places!):

"Tea Partiers are not a fringe phenomenon. The political views of those who identify with Tea Partiers from a distance and those who are actively engaged in the movement are very similar. From the perspective of Tea Party detractors, the sympathizers are for the most part as extreme as are actual Tea Party organizers and participants.

And there are plenty of those sympathizers. While people who are official members of Tea Party organizations and those who attend Tea Parties are relatively few, those who are generally sympathetic to their cause are many. In fact, taken together, these three groups comprise 47% of likely voters according to our latest survey. Senator Scott Brown's assertion that he could not win with a mere support of the Tea Party Movement misses this larger point: Tea Party activists can elect few people but Tea Party supporters can elect many more and winning without at least some of the Tea Party sympathetic vote is, at the present moment, a tall order."