Tea Party guide to legislative supporters

The Dispatch ran an article titled "Tea party has had it with GOP"

Feeling betrayed by the Republican Party and its leaders, tea party groups in Ohio appear to be uniting and moving toward either a split from the GOP or action to punish Republican candidates who fail ideological purity tests.
[...]
It remains uncertain, however, just how much the Ohio GOP and its candidates could be hurt by an insurrection because it is difficult to assess the true strength of tea party groups. A 2012 poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about 28 percent of Republicans identified themselves as tea party supporters.

To gage how much support the Tea Party has within the Ohio GOP legislative House caucus, we took a look at who had signed on to the Tea Party's pet union busting "right to work" cause. Spread across HB 151 (Private Employees "Right to work" bill) and HB 152 (Public Employees "Right to work" bill), the following Republican state Representatives sponsored or cosponsored one or both of these Tea Party bills

Adams
Beck
Becker
Blair
Boose
Brenner
Buchy
Hood
Lynch
Maag (sponsor)
Roegner (sponsor)
Rosenberger
Stautberg
Terhar
Thompson
Wachtmann
Young

This represents 28% of the GOP house caucus, identical to the number of Republicans the Kaiser Family Foundation found identified as Tea Partiers. You will also note Rep Terhar on the list, he is the spouse of the Hitler referencing Debe Terhar, the President of the State Board of Education - quite the family of anti-working people policy advocates.

28% is quite a sizable rump for the more moderate Republicans to have to deal with, and it might be growing

But tea party leaders say their ranks are being swelled by social conservatives who oppose abortion and gay marriage and who are angry with the Republican Party.

This also corresponds with the information we published as to why some on the Ohio GOP were wanting to push "right to work" - it's all about bigotry

Harvey said the NEA has supported an “immoral, deviant and destructive” gay agenda for at least 25 years, citing its gay and lesbian caucus started in 1987. Harvey criticized the union for supporting a gay and lesbian history month, diversity training that included homosexuality, and pro-homosexual school counseling. She said the NEA has asked schools to protect students and staff from sexual orientation harassment and discrimination and has replaced the word “tolerance” with acceptance and respect.

“Kids are being trained as activists now,” she said.

Harvey said the NEA has voted to lobby for same-sex unions and said petitions are currently circulating to overturn the 2004 Ohio marriage amendment, which stated that that only a union between a man and woman would be recognized as a valid marriage. The OEA opposed the amendment.

It's hard believe that the "Tea party has had it with GOP" when at least 28% of the Ohio GOP's elected Representatives is made up of tea partiers.

Where the polls stand - Post convention

With the RNC and DNC conventions over, the clear winner, based on current polling, appears to be President Obama.

”Mr. Obama had another strong day in the polls on Saturday, making further gains in each of four national tracking polls. The question now is not whether Mr. Obama will get a bounce in the polls, but how substantial it will be.Some of the data, in fact, suggests that the conventions may have changed the composition of the race, making Mr. Obama a reasonably clear favorite as we enter the stretch run of the campaign.” Nate Silver in The New York Times.

Let's take a look at the state of play. First, Real Clear Politics has the race essentially unchanged from last week, with President Obama having 221 electoral college votes to Mitt Romney's 191, 126 are listed as toss-ups

In Ohio, RCP has Obama's lead increasing from an average of 1.4% to 2.2%

538, whom we quoted up top, has the President's advantage increasing by 10 electoral college votes, and now stands at landslide levels of 318.8

In Ohio his chances of victory have also increased and now stand at 74.6%, up from 71.5 last week.

Crazy polling result of the day perhaps comes from a PPP poll of Ohio, where 15% of Ohio Republicans said Mitt Romney deserved more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.