Democrats’ efforts to tar the tea partiers as crackpots and racists don’t seem to be paying off. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 48% of voters say that tea partiers’ views on major issues are closer than those of Barack Obama to their own views, while 44% say Obama’s views are closer to theirs. Among independents, tea partiers’ views are preferred to Obama’s by a 50%-38% margin. The margin for tea partiers is even larger when voters are asked whether their views are closer to those of tea partiers or of average union members. The score: 45% tea partiers, 35% union members.

Rasmussen Reports adds the following: “’Unaffiliated voters are continuing the pattern they established in 2006 and 2008 of opposing the party in power,’ notes Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. In his new book, Scott makes the case that ‘the American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center. They want to govern themselves.’ In Search of Self-Governance has received positive reviews from across the political spectrum and is available at Rasmussen Reports and Amazon.com.” That sounds a lot like my March 31 Examiner column in which I argued that most Americans are rejecting dependence on government and are declaring their independence instead.