Tea Party, Swing Voter Blogging Audience

As a reminder for my fellow tea party bloggers, here is a run down of our audence. Linda Killian is on a book tour for "The Swing Vote." In the book, she identifies four types of independent voters or swing voters. These are actually tea party voters.

We write to make a difference, so knowing our audience is critical.

1. Suburban Moms and Dads: the largest group, diverse, economically conservative, socially moderate
2. NPR Republicans: old, raise most of the money, socially conservative, economically moderate. Rockefeller Republicans who are now more independent.
3. Facebook Generation: young, economically conservative, socially classically liberal/libertarian, easy to sway but hard to turn out
4. America First Democrats (aka Reagan Democrats): male, working class, midwestern, traditional values, religious, socially conservative, NRA members.

The Atlantic has a long piece on this subject, but this paragraph summarizes the power of the tea party/swing voter:

The Republican victories in the 2010 midterm election were also decided by these voters. Independents supported Democrats by 18 points in 2006. But driven by their concern about the nation's economy and strong opposition to Democratic spending and health-care initiatives, they supported Republican congressional candidates in 2010 by the overwhelming margin of 56 to 38 percent, a 36-point swing from 2006.

Linda Killian is not tea party friendly or takes that tact to ensure media coverage. Move past the code language and consider that three of these four groups are the tea party.  The other group, Rockefeller/NPR Republicans, are accessible via social issues but will be targeted to divide and conquer Obama's opponents. The actual point of the book is "how to beat the tea party."  The intent is to separate the money from the movement which is pointed out by the quote: 

Money is the driving force in the American political system... It's not just the mother's milk of politics -- it's the cottage cheese and yogurt too.