Global Issues
Anti-Government Sentiment Mounting in U.S.
Public hostility toward the government has reached record highs, according to a major new survey released on the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the worst deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. territory before 9/11.
The survey, which comes amid growing media attention to the openly anti-government 'Tea Party' movement rallies, could spell bad news for incumbent Democrats in next November's mid-term Congressional elections, although Republicans have also suffered a sharp decline in their popularity in just the last two months, according to the poll results.
'The Tea Party movement, which has a small but fervent anti-government constituency, could be a wild card in this election,' according to Andrew Kohut, Pew's veteran director and author of a lengthy analysis of the survey's findings.
'On one hand, its sympathisers are highly energised and inclined to vote Republican this fall. On the other, many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the Tea Party represents their point of view better than does the GOP (Grand Old Party, or Republicans).'
The poll, which was carried out in mid-March, found that three out of four of the more than 2,500 respondents queried said they were either 'frustrated' or 'angry' with the federal government. Only one in four respondents said they had a favourable opinion of Congress, the lowest rating in more than two decades.
Thirty percent said they see the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedom, while only 22 percent said they can trust the government in Washington 'almost always' or 'most of the time'.
That was the lowest score in 50 years and slightly below the previous nadir in 1994, just before a Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh, blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
Just last Friday, Bill Clinton, who was serving his first term as president at the time of the bombing, warned in a speech at the Centre for American Progress (CAP) of 'parallels between the anti-government tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today'.
'Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America' which he said consisted of an 'uncritical hatred of government and belief that all taxes were illegitimate'.
'The fabric of American life had been unravelling, more and more people who had a hard time figuring out where they fit in,' he went on. '...It is true that we see some of that today.'
Indeed, in recent months, and particularly since the onset of the debate over health-care reform legislation that was ultimately approved by majority Democrats in Congress last month, virulent anti-government sentiment has become a growing focus for both the mainstream media and law-enforcement agencies that have tracked the revival of the kinds of militia movements and extremist groups from which McVeigh and his accomplices emerged 15 years ago.
Two weeks ago, the FBI arrested several individuals for making death threats against Democratic lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while the number of serious other threats to members of Congress has nearly tripled over the last six months, the Senate's Sergeant at Arms told Newsweek earlier this month.
According to a report published by the Southern Poverty Law Centre earlier this year, anti-immigrant vigilante groups grew by nearly 80 percent during 2009, while so-called 'Patriot' groups, defined as 'militias and other organisations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose 'one-world government' on liberty-loving Americans' tripled their number - from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 by the end of 2009.
'We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,' according to Chip Berlet, a long-time monitor of radical right-wing groups for Boston-based Political Research Associates (PRA).
'We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people (who are) angry, resentful, and full of anxiety,' he wrote earlier this year. 'They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programmes and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labour laws, abortion, and gay marriage.'
While Patriot groups are the most virulent expression of these movements, the Tea Partiers, among whose favourite politicians are former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, have attracted the national political spotlight.
The Pew poll found that 24 percent respondents voiced agreement with the Tea Party movement, although only 14 percent said it best represented their own political views at the moment, compared with 17 percent who named the Republican Party and 31 percent who identified their views with the Democrats.
According to another survey of self-described Tea Party followers released last week by the New York Times and CBS news, nine out of 10 are white; three out of four are at least 45 years old; and more than 60 percent say they watch the far-right Fox News cable channel for 'information about politics and current events'.
Only seven percent said they have a favourable view of President Barack Obama; 93 percent said they believe Obama is moving the country toward socialism; and 32 percent said they believe Obama was born in another country.
The Tea Party's emergence has put Republican leaders in a bind. On the one hand, some leaders have embraced the movement, hoping it will provide the grassroots energy and mobilisation that could help them regain control of at least one house in Congress next fall.
Others, however, have been more wary, especially about the eagerness with which the movement is rallying behind more right-wing candidates against prominent Republican incumbents, including Palin's presidential running-mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, in primary races for the House and Senate.
Kohut dated the recent downward trend in trust in government more to the financial crisis that broke out in the fall of 2008 than to the inauguration of Obama, the first black U.S. president.
'(T)here is considerable evidence that distrust of government is strongly connected to how people feel about the overall state of the nation,' he said.
The public, according to Kohut, 'is now evenly divided over whether federal government programmes should be maintained to deal with important problems or cut back greatly to reduce the power of government.'
While that finding marked a major advance for the mainly Republican advocates of smaller government compared to just 15 months ago, Democrats could take heart from a related finding: six in 10 respondents favour stronger government regulation of banks and financial companies, the White House's current top legislative priority.
Indeed, banks and financial institutions were found by the survey to have the highest negative ratings - 69 percent - of any major institution covered by the survey, including Congress and the federal government (65 percent), other large corporations (64 percent), and the Obama administration itself (45 percent).
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service