Tea Party in South Carolina

Tea Party Convention

I will be going to South Carolina to attend a Tea Party Convention and a the Republican debate.   (OK, I have confirmed tickets as a Bronze participant in the Tea Party Convention and I am in the Lottery drawing pool for the Debate.)   But the events will put lots of Republican candidates into South Carolina for a short time, which is the ideal way for me to see people and events up close.

A feature of this campaign is the applause lines that really work.   Republican audiences want ferocious statements, not statements of cooperation and bipartisanship.   Indeed, descriptions of bipartisanship receive boos.   And Republican audiences respond enthusiastically to words of outright contempt for the federal government generally and Obama specifically.   Applause words I draw from memory are  "pathetic", "weakling", "miserable".   

Republican Debate

I will attempt to use some real discipline and order in listing and actually counting the words and themes that get the strongest responses.   I will chart and graph them or in some other way try to bring some rigor to my report.

There is a great deal of difference in Republican candidate tone (angry, calm, bombastic, etc.) but actual policies differ only within a small range.   I think this is because audiences have trained the candidates and there is something these audiences want to hear.  But I want to test that hypothesis, so off i go.