A new Gallup poll confirms what TAC has argued before: the Tea Parties are less a new, anti-government movement than the old Republican Party in populist drag. The psephologists report that 79 percent of Tea Partiers consider themselves Republicans, and 80 percent plan to vote GOP in November.

An anti-Washington movement would necessarily tilt Republican at this point, for the obvious reason that Democrats control both the White House and Congress. But the fact that the overwhelming majority of Tea Partiers self-identify with the GOP strongly suggests they will not be railing against Republican bailouts, Republican big government, and Republican wars — as indeed they did not during six years of Bush and the GOP Congress. On the bright side, that 21 percent of the Tea Party that does not consider itself joined at the hip to the Republican Party may develop into a greater (and better) force over time.

See Michael Brendan Dougherty’s essay on the GOP’s manipulation of the grassroots and John Derbyshire on why the Tea Parties are not a Middle American revolutionaries, as well as Derbyshire’s piece on the Tea Party vs. the Inner Party and Jim Antle’s cover story in the current TAC on prospects for turning the Tea Parties against the GOP’s favorite big-government program — war.