Why does everyone hate the Tea Party?

You might think that with Ted Cruz still hoarse from faux filibustering the Senate, and House conservatives on the brink of shutting down the government, Tea Partiers would have reason to celebrate. But a Gallup poll released this morning might put any partying on hold: Popular support for the conservative movement has dwindled to a near-record low.

The percentage of Americans who support the Tea Party shrank from 32 percent in November 2010, when Republicans retook the House of Representatives, to just 22 percent today. That’s not quite as low as the 21 percent support it commanded in late 2011, but it's still a distinct downward slide that looks set to continue. Opponents of the movement now outnumber supporters by five percentage points. The pollster Lydia Saad lays out the bottom line:

It’s tempting to blame the junior senator from Texas for America’s cooling on the Tea Party.

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Cruz’s theatrics in the Senate have reinforced his status as the patron saint of the movement, and to many, he has become its public face. But many Republicans believe Cruz’s strategy is harming the party, and that distaste may be translating into waning support among moderate conservatives for Tea Party goals. Cruz and fellow rabble-rouser Sen. Mike Lee (R– Utah) “have absolutely no idea what they are doing,” complains Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post, a onetime cheerleader for the movement:

But perhaps, as Jeb Golinkin suggested at TheWeek.com earlier this year, the Tea Party is losing support because its followers believe it has sold out to the mainstream Republican Party. Supporters may have realized that what was once a grassroots movement of true believers has been "appropriated by a new class of political insiders," made up of freshmen congressmen awed by Washington, and money-scraping strategists for political action committees:

Then again, while support is dwindling, opposition to the Tea Party is not growing. In fact, 51 percent of Americans said they had no strong feelings about the movement at all — neither supporting nor opposing it, or having no opinion. And the percentage of people who consider themselves Tea Party supporters is still higher than those who admit to being liberal, notes William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

And if Tea Partiers still believe their movement is leaking popular support, they might be comforted by the fact that there is still one group in politics even less popular than they are: The U.S. Congress.