Fear Strikes Out

I can't resist another post on health care reform, this time to note Paul Krugman's latest column, "Fear Strikes Out," in the New York Times. Here's how it starts:

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.

But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)

Krugman points out how cynical the whole campaign against health care reform has been:

For the most part, however, opponents of reform didn’t even pretend to engage with the reality either of the existing health care system or of the moderate, centrist plan — very close in outline to the reform Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts — that Democrats were proposing.

Instead, the emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.

It wasn’t just the death panel smear. It was racial hate-mongering, like a piece in Investor’s Business Daily declaring that health reform is “affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color.” It was wild claims about abortion funding. It was the insistence that there is something tyrannical about giving young working Americans the assurance that health care will be available when they need it, an assurance that older Americans have enjoyed ever since Lyndon Johnson — whom Mr. Gingrich considers a failed president — pushed Medicare through over the howls of conservatives.

And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way.

Note that Gingrich's comment, which he's desperately trying to spin, was all too accurate. In 1964, the Democratic Party, under the leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, pushed through Congress the Civil Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation outlawing racial segregation. At the time, the South was solidly Democratic - and vehemently opposed to racial integration. But with the help of northern Republicans, the bill passed to far-reaching effect.

All political observers knew what this would do to the Democratic Party. This would lose them the South, until then the most solidly-Democratic voting block in the country. As Gingrich noted, this pretty well shattered the old Democratic Party and let the Republicans dominate for decades. The Democratic leadership - in the House, the Senate, and the White House - did it anyway. It was the right thing to do.

Republicans were gleeful - absolutely ecstatic. This was their chance to take the South for themselves. So they started deliberately appealing to white racists, both subtly ("states' rights") and blatantly ("Willie Horton"). They raged against immigration. They did everything they could to woo the Deep South, then as now the far-right Bible Belt in America. They became anti-science, anti-reason, anti-foreigner. They even abandoned one of the bedrock principles of America's Constitution, the separation of church and state.

And it worked. The South is now solidly Republican. And with this new coalition, the Republican Party has dominated American politics for decades. All because the Democrats ignored the political consequences and did the right thing. Foolish of them, huh?