Quinnipiac University's most recent poll of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa measured Bush's support from Tea Party-aligned voters, who accounted for nearly a third of the sample, at only 3 percent. In a recent national survey by Quinnipiac, 32 percent of the Tea Party respondents said they definitely would not support him for the Republican nomination.
It's worth noting that as Bush was leaving office in 2006, 72 percent of white, born-again evangelicals told Quinnipiac they approved of his work as governor. This group is not a perfect facsimile for Tea Party, which at the time was several years away from its rise. But it's an indicator of how one tried and true conservative wing of the party viewed Bush.
There's considerable irony in the position Bush is in nearly a decade later. The big government bailouts initiated by his brother as president were seen as instigating the Tea Party's rise and shifting the Republican Party's activist base further to the right. Read more.
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