Is Tea Party extremism simply aspect dominance?

It has been widely suggested that the coverage of the Tea Party has been focused on a few offensive and unrepresentative cases. Many of the arguments have gone something like this (from the LA Times:

A new Gallup Poll out this morning of 1,033 finds nothing fringe about self-proclaimed Tea Party adherents; they are slightly more likely to be employed, male and definitely more conservative. But otherwise Gallup's Lydia Saad writes, "their age, educational background, employment status,and race -- Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large."

But in an excellent post, Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight has a different take:

But the Gallup results only confirm that tea partiers are "mainstream" in their demographics, when what really matters are their attitudes. Results released Friday of a new multi-state poll of white voters conducted by the University of Washington's Christopher Parker paint a more complicated picture. The survey asked white respondents about their attitudes toward the tea party movement--and their attitudes toward non-whites, immigrants and homosexuals.