Frank Rich says that conservatives' outrage at the health care bill isn't about health care, it's about teabaggers (many of their grassroots leaders unemployed), feeling insecure about their future place in America. That is, they're scared of ascendant non-whites.
Is that an unfair accusation? As a blanket statement, yes. Surely not all teabaggers are racists. But look at it another way: Why are there are no black Republicans in Congress; and almost all teabaggers are white? Do white people know something the rest of America doesn't?
If you're a teabagger (aka Republican) who is not racist and believes in the righteousness of your movement, let me ask you: Do you think the GOP and Tea Parties deliberately exclude non-whites? Strategically, is there something you could say or do, or stop saying or doing, that would attract non-whites to your cause without sacrificing your core principles? Because intentionally or not, you have scared them away. Because the rest of America (which is about 50%, demographically, and about 70%, ideologically), wants nothing to do with you.
If you want your movement to have staying power and lasting influence, you should be interested in this question. If you just want an excuse to repeat what you heard them yelling on FOXNews and talk radio so that everybody nods and says, "I know!", or a reason to get out of the house, carry signs and chant like you chose not to in the 60's, then forget about it. Your anger -- and your movement -- will peter out anyway. Likewise your true party -- the GOP -- will become less relevant.
By Frank Rich
March 27, 2010 | New York Times
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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 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 since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
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