Has America Flip-Flopped?

It’s Friday, April 17, 2009. Here’s what we’re looking at:

With this week’s Tax Day Tea Party protests, the Daily Show takes a humorous look into whether America itself has flip-flopped.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Nationwide Tax Protests
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

But could there be more truth to the comedy than Jon Stewart realizes? Earlier this week, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com pointed out some interesting Gallup findings on America’s confidence in Fed Chair Ben Bernanke. The partisan split on his support has completely reversed itself.


In light of both the reversal of support for Bernanke and the Tea Party protests, it seems that Americans simply have greater confidence in their government when their party is in power - and are more likely to talk about “revolution” when their party is in the minority.

Obviously this is not surprising - what’s surprising is how it all happened so fast.