I just read this op-ed piece in the NY Times. This is the last half of it, from Frank Rich. I think his assessment of the extreme vitriol coming from the far right, coupled with the GOP’s failure to forcibly address and denounce it, is pretty interesting. Given that there is some racist-fueled rhetoric being spewed at these Tea Party gatherings, perhaps Mr. Rich has a valid point here. Or does he? Thoughts?
If Obamaâ??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 â?? topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman â?? would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. Itâ??s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver â?? none of them major Democratic players in the health care push â?? received a major share of last weekendâ??s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan â??Take our country back!,â?? these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They canâ??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 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 havenâ??t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House 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, thatâ??s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, thatâ??s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they canâ??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 canâ??t pretend that weâ??re talking about â??isolated incidentsâ?? or a â??fringeâ?? utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found 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 â??now on the books.â?? 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 Palinâ??s â??reloadâ?? rhetoric.
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, thatâ??s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
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