Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Jane Sherron de Hart

Author:Jane Sherron de Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

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The challenges awaiting the new administration staggered. An economic crisis had wiped out savings and left fifteen million workers unemployed and an economy in recession. Something had to be done about a collapsed housing market, accelerating income inequality, and a global banking collapse. A broken health system demanded urgent attention as did escalating costs of ever more frequent climate-related catastrophes. A disengaged but combat-weary nation wanted its military personnel recalled from Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time that terrorist threats promised perpetual war. And despite protestations by some whites that racism had been conquered, America’s “original sin” remained a powerful presence.

With Congress controlled by Democrats, Obama, a skilled policy maker, hoped for bipartisanship. But Republican opposition—honed in the House since Newt Gingrich clashed with Bill Clinton—had spread to the Senate as an increasingly ideological electorate became less inclined to trust members of the opposing party. A few days after the election, Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell assembled his caucus to lay out his strategy for obstructing and undermining the new president at every opportunity. Abetted by conservative interest groups, think tanks, right-wing media, and the Internet, McConnell would succeed in manipulating the rules of the Senate to block administration initiatives large and small.

Nor was the GOP establishment the only part of the Republican Party bent on opposition. Grassroots activists on the far right felt betrayed by the Bush administration’s high-cost bailouts of banks. Resentful of a political class irresponsive to “average Americans” that failed to keep its word about reducing either the size of government or the national debt, they feared that Obama would continue the stimulus package and other expensive government programs, including a new health-care initiative. White middle-class, middle-aged, and elderly, they also believed that minorities, and especially immigrants, had not earned the right to government benefits to which productive citizens were entitled.

In rallying to “take their country back,” many of these aggrieved insurgents had more in mind than the size of government and the exigencies of fiscal policy. The commander in chief was a black liberal intellectual, as was his attorney general. The majority leader of the House wore pearls. An openly gay Jew headed the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which appropriated funds for the Wall Street bailout. A thirty-eight-year-old, pregnant, unmarried Latina congresswoman proudly served her California constituents, and the daughter of Puerto Rican migrants would soon gain a seat on the Court. Even more telling, minority births would exceed those of whites in 2011. For those who still believed that the United States was a heterosexual, white, Christian country where men set the standard and subordinate groups stayed in their place, this was not change Tea Partiers could believe in.

Building on this grassroots momentum and claiming close ideological affiliation, professionally run right-wing advocacy groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity jumped in. Pushing their own billionaire-funded agenda, they called for reducing government regulations, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and lowering taxes on businesses and the rich.

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