(NAME-MCE) The Rage Is Not About Health Care

[Bill Howe]

March 28, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist, NY Times
The Rage Is Not About Health Care
By FRANK RICH<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion
threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This
Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl
Rove<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/21/karl-rove-shouts-at-david_n_507489.html>all
but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few
hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner
revved up<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/john-boehner-blasts-health-care-bill-10165837>his
“Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant
fodder
for a new viral
video<http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/03/24/hell-no-you-cant-obama-and-boehner-duet-at-last/>remixing
his rap with
will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having
previously likened the health care bill to
Armageddon<http://congress.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/03/20/boehner-its-armageddon-health-care-bill-will-ruin-our-country/>,
was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its
more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning
salons<http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/a-tax-beyond-the-pale/>
.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about
watching goons hurl venomous
slurs<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032002556.html>at
congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay
Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and
vandalism<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032501722.html>stretched
from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York,the F.B.I. and the local
police<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/03/25/2010-03-25_fear_for_their_health_dems_get_police_protection_as_threats_turn_ugly.html>had
to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so
little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry
of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at
Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its
proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big
deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s
adjective<http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/at-white-house-bidens-expletive-caught-on-open-mic/>to
hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great
Society-style
government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly
insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority
than The Wall Street Journal editorial
page<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704117304575138071192342664.html>observed
last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt
Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be
considered Republican ideas.

Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg
on disruptive protesters<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/21/us/politics/AP-US-Health-Care-Protest.html>even
as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last
Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to
shout<http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/texas-lawmaker-admits-baby-killer-remark/>“baby
killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this
bill that drove a demonstrator to
spit<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/03/20/us/politics/AP-US-Health-Care-Overhaul-Cleaver.html>on
Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this
“middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls
it<http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/obama-forcefully-makes-case-at-capitol/>,
that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the
bill!” to Sarah Palin’s
cry<http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/10935548053>for her
followers to “reload.” At
least<http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/crime/article/damage_at_home_of_perriello_brother_under_investigation/54038/>
four<http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/dahlkemper-turns-over-to-authorities-threatening-letter-charging-she-will-never-sleep-through-night.php>
of
the<http://www.azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_eb24e4fe-35dc-11df-ad88-001cc4c03286.html>
House
members <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14752837> hit with death threats
or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle
crosshairs<http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin#!/notes/sarah-palin/dont-get-demoralized-get-organized-take-back-the-20/373854973434>on
a map on her Facebook page.

When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965,
there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington
Post,<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031902636.html>Alf
Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for
repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go
for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on
Thursday<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/03/25/us/politics/politics-us-usa-healthcare-obama.html>,
and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits
on the elderly and children
alike<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/your-money/health-insurance/22consumer.html>.)
When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of
“socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a
boycott<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C17FD3F5A157A93C4AB178AD95F418685F9>from
the American Medical Association.

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated
reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare,
to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in
Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate
(73<http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64text.htm>)
than Medicare (70 <http://www.ssa.gov/history/tally65.html>). But it was
only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails.
That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable
change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all
framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for
president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William
Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the
bill<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00910FA3B5B1B728DDDA00994DE405B848AF1D3>as
a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation”
of
states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an
insane person into your place of
business<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0C1FF73A5E147A93C7A81789D85F408685F9>.”
Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said
the bill<http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0815FA385B1B728DDDAA0994DB405B848AF1D3>“would
destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely
syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal
dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in
Philadelphia, Miss<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1962220>
.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the
right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a
government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the
explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this
anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the
over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential
reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in
right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first
signs were the shrieks of
“traitor<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/10/16/2008-10-16_at_palin_rally_reporter_hears_threat_to_.html>”
and “off with his
head<http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/08/1517943.aspx>”
at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008.
Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing
to secessionists<http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D97J48IO2.html>at
a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous
brandishing <http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/08/17/2032801.aspx> of
assault weapons <http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/PHXBeat/60504> at
Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s
address to Congress<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10wilson.html>last
fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial
reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The
conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped
off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional
committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling
and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.
It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major
Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last
weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our
country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back
from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill
contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The
Times reported<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E0DF1E3BF931A25750C0A9669D8B63>that
births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of
all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the
next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the
minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans
haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the
House<http://baic.house.gov/member-profiles/>since 2003 and have had
only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties
about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity
in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay
the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings
and, as John McCain has
vowed<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/88285-mccain-dont-expect-gop-cooperation-the-rest-of-this-year>,
refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a
political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by
remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias,
runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they
can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe”
utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week
found<http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1436>that 74
percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or
Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with
Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in
both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence.
The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might
happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the
books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on
Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires
for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload”
rhetoric. <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/25/mccain-palin-crosshairs/>

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea
Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its
extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders
of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey
Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator
that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

•

Correction: Timothy Geithner’s title at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
was president and chief executive
officer<http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/orgchart/geithner.html>,
not chairman, as I wrote here last week.


Bill Howe
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