Tea Party movement overwhelmingly supports Newt Gingrich, rejects Romney, Paul.

Yesterday Grassfire Nation, parent company of Liberty News Network, the self-proclaimed Tea Party news source, completed a GOP primary survey with 29,000 Tea Party respondents. The results suggest that nearly half of every tea party minded voter supports Newt Gingrich. The survey ran from January 23-25, 2012, following the South Carolina Primaries, and just in time for the Florida Primaries. The full results of the survey can be found here.

Another interesting aspect of the survey was the large dislike for Ron Paul, as noted by nearly 60% of these surveyed. The Tea Party obviously doesn’t see him as supporting many of their conservative values that are important to this right winged portion of the republican party (though Paul would likely tell you, it’s not that he doesn’t support conservative values, but rather then he doesn’t believe it’s the Federal Governments responsibility to enforce them). Many people are even seeing Paul as nothing more than a Libertarian in the mist of the GOP. His son, Rand, on the other hand was elected to congress thanks to the Tea Party movement; who shares many similar political views as Paul.

Certainly this survey this adds fuel to Newt’s fire for the upcoming Florida primary next Tuesday, but will this help dispel much of the mainstream media’s apparent dislike for Newt? Certainly some people think so.

What is also pointed out by this survey is that conservative’s overwhelmingly do not support Romney as their go to guy, but at the same time there seems to be a large number of more moderate republicans who do. There is a very obvious split in the Republican Party between conservatives and more main stream republicans. This begs the question as to if today’s Republican Party is truly a conservative party, or if its only chance at victory is to be more appealing to middle of the road voters.