The Tilting Yard: What's the Matter With Democrats?
It's no secret that the tea party faithful regard the Obama administration as a Constitution-shredding tyranny. But in a profile of the movement published last week, the New York Times reported the surprising news that many of the protesters have come to this view as a result of their experiences in the recession: "Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame."</br></br>An account of a conservative uprising published a few days later by the Washington Post under the headline, "Appalachia is slipping from grip of Democrats," told the story of a hard-bitten congressional district in western Virginia where the response to the recession has been a dramatic swerve to the right.</br></br>The free-market system blunders into recession; its victims flock to the free-market banner. And here we go again.</br></br>The backlash against liberalism has been going on for more than 40 years. It is as immediate as this morning's newspaper but as old as those "Silent Majority" buttons you find at antique stores. Since the days of George Wallace, conservatives have been leading rebellions against hippies, against busing, against Hollywood, against property taxes, against welfare, against evolution, against whatever.</br></br>The formula is familiar beyond the point of tedium: Middle-American righteousness, resentment of liberal "elites," weepy fantasies of persecution set to a country-music melody. Yet its power never wears off. Today conservatives are giddily anticipating another electoral disaster for the "Party of the People."