While it's true that recent town hall tea-bag protests were effectively seeded by astroturfing special interests, we should not ignore the fact that there is a large number of mainly white southern conservatives who are honestly paranoid the federal government is attempting to take over their lives. This paranoia, while fueled by Fox News and the conservative establishment, has its root in one important truism: Barack Obama is the first American president since the passage of the Civil Rights Act who is both a Democrat and not from the South.
Yes, conservatives railed and rallied against Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. However, those who have been around long enough agree that the tenor of the current right-wing movement sounds more desperate, paranoid, uglier and more fundamentalist than at any point in the last 45 years. For the first time since the Civil War, a southern governor has openly talked about secession, and he was wildly applauded by his constituents. It's hard to imagine this happening during a time when the Union was lead by an Arkansonian oozing southern charm or a devout Baptist from Georgia.
Make of it what you will, but the last non-southern Democratic President, John Kennedy, made it his prerogative to bring about the biggest overhaul of Southern norms and protocol since Reconstruction, and he was assassinated (allegedly) by a White Southerner in the South before his goal could be achieved. Ultimately, it was Kennedy's Texan Vice-President who finished the job, getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and enforced. And at the time, many southerners, Republican and Democrat, derided Lyndon Johnson as a traitor to his region.
The fact that our current Democratic President is from Chicago - a top "elite liberal enclave" behind only New York City and Hollywood - is no accident. Throughout the past decade, the Republican Party has increasingly become a regional rump party. George W. Bush had to transform himself into a Southern rancher to win the Republican Primary in 2000. John McCain, who does not speak with a drawl and was never fully embraced and trusted by his party's base, was forced, against his better judgment, to pick an inexperienced, pro-life, rural, Christian fundamentalist to back him up. Therefore, it seems unlikely the South will produce another strong Democratic candidate for high-office any time soon. Because of right-wing southerners' intolerance for any and everyone who drinks lattes, espouses their Ivy-League background, supports the LGBT community, or doesn't go to a church to worship, they have forced their region into political irrelevance. The immediate future of Democratic leadership is in the North. Therefore, the immediate future of American policy is in the North, and these people are scared. They are scared into doing awful things like ripping up a photograph of Rosa Parks, and they are scared into believing stupid things like the federal government is planning to take away their guns. I'm sure many even believe our Black president wants revenge on them for being White. But it seems logical that the majority of those old enough are thinking back to the last time a northern progressive was elected president, and how their whole world was flipped upside-down.