The Tea Party movement in all its myriad forms — free-market groups, little old ladies, crusty in flag hats, fans of Beck’s 9/12 Project — have done everything one could possibly ask to derail a government takeover of the health-care system. It will be a perverse irony if their high-visibility protests end up persuading Democrats to damn the torpedoes in the face of near-certain electoral doom.
This Thursday — two days after Republicans won the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, and two days before the House of Representatives is slated to vote on its version of Obamacare — some 10,000 Tea Party activists turned out on Capitol Hill, on relatively short notice, to attend a rally and to make “house calls” on their members.
The midday rally featured all the trademarks of the movement: teabags, yellow-and-black “Kill the Bill” signs, chants of “Reform yourself, not us,” the opening music of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” A new wrinkle was signs using the logo from V, ABC’s new alien-invasion television series that some have argued feels like an allegory of the Obamamania that swept the country last year. Tea Party organizers also held rallies at members’ district offices around the country.
While Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R., Minn.) was the headliner of the Capitol Hill rally, Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor also appeared, making clear that the rally and its message represented a wider swath of the House GOP than only conservative diehards like Bachmann and Steve King of Iowa. Cantor got one of the biggest roars when he pledged that the Pelosi-backed version of the bill would, like the stimulus legislation, receive no Republican votes in the House.
Washington is used to Capitol Hill protests, and not just from groups on the left, as the annual March for Life demonstrates. But by most standards, this event was eyebrow raising — thousands of people turning out at noon on a weekday, with only a few days’ warning.
Just about everything the Tea Partiers have been asked to do, they’ve done with relish — the Tax Day protest, the angry crowds at congressional town-hall meetings this summer, the 9/12 rally on the Mall in Washington. Obama’s overall approval rating has steadily slid for most of the year, and his approval rating on health care has been under water (more disapproval than approval) for months now. His influence with voters appears to be waning: He pulled out all the stops for Jon Corzine in New Jersey, with rallies in Newark and Camden on the Sunday before Election Day; two days later, Corzine got considerably fewer votes in those cities than four years ago.
So all of this ought to have Democrats quaking in their boots and terrified of casting a vote for the heath-care bill, right?
Perhaps not.
In August, I wrote, “Many congressional Democrats, told that passage of the sweeping health-care legislation will cost them their seats, may find the choice a harder decision than many observers think. Yes, no one should doubt a politician’s instinct for self-preservation. But it’s quite possible that long-serving Democrats might want to enact a sweeping social change instead of taking the safe route.”
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