Favorable Opinion of Tea Party: 27%

Favorable Opinion of Occupy Wall Street:  54%

– National Poll by Time magazine

And when you factor in disfavorability, the Occupy Wall Street folks have a huge net positive, compared to the tea party.

Oddly, there are reports that Tea Party organizations are trying to distance themselves from the Occupy Wall Street movement:

“The left is trying to create a counter force to the tea party, but it’s almost laughable that anyone is comparing the two, because they’re totally different,” said Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express.

But the two movements are not opposite:

“We’re both populist movements, but this is not an answer to the tea party,” asserted Kevin Zeese, an organizer of an anti-war group that has affiliated itself with the Occupy D.C. protests. “This has nothing to do with the tea party. We welcome them to come participate if they share our anger about economic insecurity.”

Meanwhile, Reuters has a new story that breathlessly concludes that George Soros is behind the entire #OccupyWallStreet venture because – wait for it – some kid saw a poster in a cafe criticizing Wall Street, the poster was made by a small group of arch-liberals in Canada, the arch-liberals in Canada receive a small amount of their funding (less than 5%) from the Tides foundation, and the Tides foundation receives some of their funding from George Soros.

Seriously, read the Reuters article.  The "connection" between Soros and OWS is that tenuous.