Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [11]
These conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a “secret agenda” to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.
These voters fervently believe that they represent a persecuted minority “whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites.” Moreover, they are convinced that the “elites” are “actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives—their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom.”
Their hero, of course, is Paranoiac-in-Chief Glenn Beck. The report continues, “They believe [Glenn Beck] embodies the best of conservative media—determination to unearth the stories the liberal media tries to bury, love of country, and refusal to be intimidated, even as the liberal media unleashes waves of attacks on his past and his credibility.” A number of focus group participants, particularly women, feared that Beck’s defiance of powerful liberal forces put his life in danger. The report wryly added, “Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend.”
Moreover, the believers have become proselytizers. According to the Carville-Greenburg report, the persecution mythology represents political gospel to its adherents, who feel “a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love. Their faith in this country and its ideals leaves them confident that their numbers will grow, and that they will ultimately defeat Barack Obama and the shadowy forces driving his hidden agenda.”
The spirit of evangelism described in the report found an outlet in the “Tea Party” protests that proliferated across the nation—aided by Fox News’s frequent and favorable coverage. The protests are modeled on the 1773 Boston Tea Party that presaged the American Revolution, but while the original Boston Tea Party challenged the autocratic authority of King George III and the British parliament, today’s Tea Parties remonstrate again at America’s duly elected president and Congress.m The analogy underlies the protesters’ paranoia, for many see Democrats as essentially foreign occupiers whose intent is not to strengthen the nation but to subjugate the inhabitants of what Sarah Palin called “the real America.” Indeed, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a prominent Tea Party promoter, calls herself “a foreign correspondent in enemy lines.”47
Correspondingly, those who share Bachmann’s point of view regard Republicans who compromise with Democrats as traitors. In the 2010 Republican primaries, Tea Party supporters have cast out a number of Republican incumbents for consorting with the enemy and supplanted them with paranoia-prone right-wing extremists. For instance, Sharon Angle, the Republican Senate nominee in Nevada, wants to abolish Social Security and has spoken of a possible need for “Second Amendment remedies”; that is, armed revolution to overthrow a tyrannical government.48 Bill Randall, a Republican congressional nominee in North Carolina, suggested that BP and the government colluded to create the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico for political purposes.49 And Rand Paul, the Republican Senate nominee in Kentucky, has expressed reservations about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and concerns about a secret plot to create a “North American Union” under a single currency.50
If these men and women win their elections, they will join an elite group of Tea Party favorites already in Congress, people like “foreign correspondent” Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has