[adrotate banner=”3″]Check out the poll and vote, if you feel the need, here. I’d say that FOX News kind of has the kung-fu grip on the Conservative media reader’s pulse, so it’s not too far of a stretch to claim that this poll is very representative of what most Conservatives who read FOX News believe. Hell most polls that get quoted on television consist of a sample of maybe 100-150 people who get phone called by robots, but the almost 89,000 individuals (at the moment of taking the screen shot) who answered the question in this poll are nothing to sneeze at. Like any other poll you read about in the newspaper or hear about on television, internet polls, especially, mean jack shit in the overall scheme of things, but this poll and the way it is worded, and especially the 64% of people who believe that it’s a “fruitless mix of racism and conspiracy theories” above all the other possible options, does say something strong in my opinion.

So we all know that the Tea Party/Birther/White Nationalist movement is a pretty insular community who are very inter-connected through social media, which creates an echo chamber and make these same crazies think they make up a significant portion of Conservatives and voting Americans. If you read some other FOX News polls you’d probably get the sense that they’re as popular too. Unfortunately there is a whole mountain of evidence that runs contrary to the tea baggers idea that they’re millions strong, and even more so in the Conservative movement, I think we’re seeing a slight return to sanity in terms of folks distancing themselves even further from the dogma of a movement that started as a protest of lower taxes and government spending but has turned into a big heaping help of crazy radical bullshit over issues that don’t even exist, let alone make sense to argue.

We’re sure as heck not out of the crazy forest yet, but if 64% of FOX News readers, almost a super-majority if you will, agree that the Tea Party movement represents a racist and conspiracy-fueled lunacy unmatched by any supposed issue they might be aligning themselves behind, then I think it’s safe to say that the Birther tide is beginning to ebb in popular politics. Sure these folks will always be around so long as Ning.com lets them have their social communities and as long as they keep doing stupid stuff and Sarah Palin continues to say retarded things, but their market for new followers is starting to get a bit shallower. Oh, and this Rassmussen Report poll that was taken during the weekend of the CPAC convention shows that only 17% of voters would choose a Tea Party presidential candidate at the ballot box. There are some really good trends represented in this poll to, such as 48% of Republicans identify with the GOP now as opposed to 39% in December. Meanwhile among Democrats and Independent voters favorability ratings of the Tea Party still rank in the single digits (the high single digits!).

Like the teenage rebel whose mixed emotions led him to do some pretty stupid shit as a kid, Conservatives are beginning to grow-up and find their rational minds again.