Polls confirm Tea Baggers are just cranky republicans who hate everybody, not just Democrats

New polling numbers out of Gallup indicate that nearly 80 percent of Tea Bagger supporters describe themselves as Republicans, while 15 percent say they are Democrats and just six percent are, in their own minds, "pure independents."

The numbers between Tea Baggers and conservative Republicans also track closely on other measures, including the image ratings of President Obama. Fifteen percent of Baggers have a favorable view of the president, while 11 percent of conservative Republicans say the same. Those numbers are strikingly different to poll data of all Americans -- 53 percent of whom view Obama favorably.

Asked whether they would support a generic Republican or a generic Democrat for Congress this fall, 80 percent of Tea Baggers chose the GOP candidate, while 15 percent opted for the Democrat.

The Tea Bagger movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene," Gallup Poll director Frank Newport wrote in an analysis of the results, which were culled from national surveys conducted in March, May and June.

The Gallup findings generally affirm findings by Resurgent Republic, a conglomerate of GOP polling firms, in five states over the past weeks.

"This is a group that is organically more Republican," said GOP pollster Glen Bolger, who conducted several focus groups of tea bagger backers. "They have turned the page on Obama."

The more important concern for republicans is when it comes to assessing the Tea Bagger’s influence in the midterm elections. As victories by Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada show, the tea baggers don’t take their marching orders from the national Republican leadership.

Republican leaders who worry about the Tea Bagger movement’s impact on their races may in fact be defined as largely worrying about their party's core base.