Frank Rich points out the obvious: the reaction on the right to health care reform is about something other than health care. The firestorm it's provoked has echoes from the past - not so much like the reaction to Social Security and Medicare but to another iconic piece of legislation.
...(T)his "middle-of-the-road" bill, as Obama accurately calls it,...has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from "Kill the bill!" to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to "reload." At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.
When Social Security and Medicare were passed they provoked strong opposition and accusations of "socialism," but nothing like this. But something else did:
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) than Medicare (70). 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 current surge of irrational fear and rage predates the health care battle of course. It started with the Palin rallies in 2008 a few months before the election, when it looked like Obama seriously might win. And it's been building ever since.
We want our country back!
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.
There is, as Rich points out, one major difference between what happened in 1964 and today's freakout on the right: after the Civil Rights Act passed, responsible leaders from both parties spoke out to try to calm the reaction and head off violence. Today, RNC Chairman Michael Steele refuses to sign a joint civility statement that calls for "elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry." McCain endorses Palin's "reload" and target imagery against Democrats. Other Republican leaders either join in egging on the violent rhetoric or cower in silence.
Maybe Republican leaders think they can ride the helter-skelter dynamic they've whipped up to victory in November, or maybe it's already so far out of hand they're afraid if they try to oppose it they'll be devoured too. But some of them had better step up soon and do what they can to tone it down.
All those nice technocratic talking points from the administration about what health care reform will do for you are fine for the people actually interested in health care, but they have nothing at all to say to the people who just want their country back.