Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (85 page)

McCain’s pollster Bill McInturff
: Balz and Johnson,
The Battle for America 2008
, pp. 330–31.

voters saw Obama as offering
: Jill Lawrence, “Poll: Obama Outperformed McCain in Debate,”
USA Today
, September 28, 2008.

“Rage Rising on the McCain Campaign Trail”
: Ed Henry and Ed Hornick, “Rage Rising on the McCain Campaign Trail,” CNN, October 11, 2008.

didn’t stop the McCain ad from declaring
: Andy Barr, “McCain Launches Ayers Ad,”
Politico
, October 9, 2008.

“I’ve spent my entire lifetime”
: Howard Kurtz, “
National Review
Boots Buckley Son for Obama Boost,”
Washington Post
, October 15, 2008.

nothing worked for McCain
: Federal Election Commission, “Federal Elections 2008: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives,”
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2008/tables2008.pdf
.

Young voters enjoyed
: “Young Voters in the 2008 Election,” Pew Research Center, November 13, 2008.

In 1988, by contrast
: My thanks to Jon Cohen and later Peyton Craighill, both of them directors of polling at the
Washington Post,
for finding these and other polling data for me. These figures were first published in a story by Dan Balz.

“On this day, we gather”
: President Barack Obama, First Inaugural Address, delivered January 20, 2009.

Among the strategic imperatives
: Robert Draper,
When the Tea Party Came to Town
(New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012), pp. xi–xviii.

“The single most important thing”
: Major Garrett, “Top GOP Priority: Make Obama a One-Term President,”
National Journal
, October 23, 2010.

“Mitch said, ‘We have a new president’ ”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Hope’s in Need of Hope Today,”
Washington Post
, November 2, 2014.

11. THE LOGIC OF OBSTRUCTION

“If there is anyone out there”
: President-elect Barack Obama, postelection victory speech, November 4, 2008.

Obama’s 68 percent approval rating
: Jeffrey M. Jones, “Obama’s Approval Ratings in Historical Context,” Gallup, January 26, 2009.

“Instant President”
: Jonathan Alter,
The Promise: President Obama, Year One
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 77–99.

“backing the bus up”
: I was told this by Pelosi staffers. A version of the story was first reported by Maureen Dowd of the
New York Times.
Maureen Dowd, “Potomac’s Postpartisan Depression,”
New York Times
, February 7, 2009. Dowd reports that Pelosi told Obama: “I don’t mind you driving the bus over me, but I don’t appreciate your backing it up and running over me again and again.”

“The president wants to work with us”
: Alter,
The Promise
, p. 118.

“We can’t run against Washington,”
: David Axelrod,
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics
(New York: Penguin Press, 2015), p. 415.

When the stimulus finally passed
: Statistics from the U.S. government’s official website on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: http://www.recovery.gov/arra/About/Pages/The_Act.aspx.

“as if it was a dog’s”
: Alter,
The Promise
, p. 129.

Because the stimulus
: Michael Grunwald,
The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012).

A CNN poll
: Paul Steinhauser, “Six in 10 Oppose Auto Bailout, Poll Shows,” CNN, December 3, 2008.

The Tea Party took off
: Michael Barone, “The Transformative Power of Rick Santelli’s Rant,”
National Review
, June 10, 2010.

He charged that the administration
: Ron Elving, “6 Years On, Is the Tea Party Here to Stay?,” NPR, February 25, 2015.

About 170,000 people responded
: Jane Hamsher, “Rick Santelli, Angry White Male 2.0,” Firedoglake, February 20, 2009.

“the rant video was the most-watched clip”
: Arun Gupta, “The Tea Party: The New Populism,” Political Research Associates, August 1, 2011.

Kate Zernike, the
New York Times
expert on the Tea Party
: Kate Zernike,
Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
(New York: Times Books, 2010), pp. 13–19.

Tea Party supporters were twice as likely
: 73 percent called themselves conservative etc. Zernike helpfully includes details from the
New York Times
/CBS News poll on the Tea Party poll in an appendix to
Boiling Mad
, pp. 195–227.

“This anger has been ignored”
: Scott Johnson, “Hannity Joins the Party,” Power Line blog, March 27, 2009.

According to
Publishers Weekly:
“Facts & Figures 2009 Revised,”
Publishers Weekly
, April 5, 2009.

Schmidt hit back
: Andy Barr and Jonathan Martin, “McCain Camp: Palin Account ‘All Fiction,’ ”
Politico
, November 13, 2009.

she found it “disappointing”
: Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Her Side of the Story,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 16, 2009.

April 2010
New York Times
/CBS News poll
: Dalia Sussman and Marina Stefan, “Obama and the ‘Birthers’ in the Latest Poll,”
New York Times
, April 21, 2010.

Obama was driven by
: Dinesh D’Souza,
The Roots of Obama’s Rage
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2010), pp. 1–127.

Newt Gingrich pronounced it “brilliant”
: David Weigel, “Newt is Nuts!,”
Slate
, September 13, 2010.

a February 2011 appearance by John Boehner
: “
Meet the Press
Transcript for February 13, 2011,” NBC News, updated February 16, 2011,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41536793/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts#.VRqyxfnF-1Y
.

Nugent condemned Obama’s
: John Avlon,
Wingnuts: Extremism in the Age of Obama
(New York: Daily Beast Books, 2014), p. 123.

Avik Roy, a conservative policy analyst
: Avik Roy, “The Torturous History of Conservatives and the Individual Mandate,”
Forbes
, February 7, 2012.

the fact-checkers at PolitiFact
: Angie Drobnic Holan, “PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘Death Panels,’ ” PolitiFact, December 18, 2009.

“Look, we politicians are no great shakes”
: This story was told to me by Frank and others in Massachusetts.

“I have a birth certificate here”
: Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Things People Say,”
New Yorker
, November 2, 2009.

It was a sign
: Federal Election Commission, “Official Election Results for United States Senate: 2010 U.S. Senate Campaigns,”
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2010/2010senate.pdf
.

“There are issues”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Mike Castle’s Defeat—and the End of Moderate Republicanism,”
Washington Post
, September 16, 2010.

Her best-known public pronouncement
: Elyse Siegel, “Christine O’Donnell in New Ad: ‘I’m Not a Witch,’ ”
Huffington Post
, October 4, 2010.

“It was relatively easy for citizens”
: Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj,
The Outrage Industry: Public Opinion Media and the New Incivility
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 169.

“The media coverage”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Extremism in Media’s Glare,”
Washington Post
, September 3, 2009.

the tide was clearly running out on Spratt
: Katharine Q. Seelye, “After 28 Years, a Congressman on the Ropes,”
New York Times
, October 12, 2010.

Spratt had been reelected
: “Election 2010: South Carolina Results,”
New York Times
,
http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/south-carolina
.

Obama’s approval rating
: “Presidential Approval Ratings—Barack Obama,” Gallup,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx
.

the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged
: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey,” data accessed March 31, 2015. The figure is for December 2009, the last report before the special election;
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
.

As Barney Frank noted
: Frank said this to me in an interview and repeated variations on it over the years. See, for example, “Ezra Klein Interviews Barney Frank,”
Washington Post
, September 27, 2009.

Obama had defeated McCain
: “Election Center 2008: President: Massachusetts,” CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/individual/#mapPMA
.

In 2010, Brown received
: “Senate Race 2010: Town-by-Town Results,”
Boston Herald
,
http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2010/senate/results.html
.

It received 53 votes
: Eric Naing, “Senate Rejects Deficit Reduction Commission,”
Open Congress
, January 26, 2010.

Yet, as Robert Kaiser wrote
: Robert G. Kaiser,
Act of Congress
(New York: Knopf, 2013), p. 384.

She offered the usual Republican criticisms
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “GOP’s Election Strategy Lets Others Do Its Dirty Work,”
Washington Post
, October 18, 2010.

“The guy just can’t tell the truth” and other advertising references
: Dionne, “GOP’s Election Strategy.”

the age composition of the electorate
: Ruy Teixeira and John Halprin, “Job Loss and Liberal Apathy,”
New Republic
, November 6, 2010.

Republicans won 77 percent
: “Portrait of the Electorate: Table of Detailed Results,”
New York Times,
November 6, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/20101107-detailed-exitpolls.html
.

In 2006 and 2008
: Jonah Goldberg, “Obama and the White Working Class,”
National Review
, March 8, 2011.

The exit poll found
: “Portrait of the Electorate: Table of Detailed Results,”
New York Times,
November 6, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/20101107-detailed-exitpolls.html
.

“I watched them in the last four years”
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “Can Democrats Step Up Their Game?,”
Washington Post
, December 6, 2010.

the exit poll found that
: “Portrait of the Electorate: Table of Detailed Results,”
New York Times,
November 6, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/20101107-detailed-exitpolls.html
.

12. THE TEA PARTY OVERREACHES AND REPUBLICANS WAGE CLASS WAR

little notice of a report
: Employee Benefit Research Institute, “EBRI Databook on Employee Benefits,”
http://www.ebri.org/pdf/publications/books/databook/db.chapter%2006.pdf
.

Obama infuriated liberals
: President Barack Obama, press conference, December 7, 2010.

“Acceding to the demands of hostage-takers”
: Perry Bacon Jr. and Scott Wilson, “Obama Calls Liberal Critics ‘Sanctimonious,’ ”
Washington Post
, December 8, 2010.

“we got health insurance”
: Justin Frank,
Obama on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
(New York: Free Press, 2011), p. 138.

“This country was founded”
: President Barack Obama, press conference, December 7, 2010.

“he also has to satisfy”
: Naftali Bendavid and Janet Hook, “GOP Aims to Tame Benefits Programs,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 4, 2011.

At a gathering of several hundred Tea Party supporters
: E. J. Dionne Jr., “The High Cost of Hating Government,”
Washington Post
, April 10, 2011.

“Yesterday we cut billions”
: Carl Hulse, “House Approves Republican Budget Plan to Cut Trillions,”
New York Times
, April 15, 2011.

“At some point”
: E. J. Dionne, “The Symbolic Battle Over the Debt Ceiling,”
Washington Post
, May 18, 2011.

“We weren’t kidding around”
: E. J. Dionne, “Can America Still Lead,”
Washington Post
, August 7, 2011.

The
New Yorker
’s Ryan Lizza
: Ryan Lizza, “Romney’s Dilemma,”
New Yorker
, June 6, 2011.

he was guarded in talking about his health plan
: Philip Rucker, “Mitt Romney Announces 2012 Presidential Bid,”
Washington Post
, June 2, 2011.

“We’re only inches away”
: Mitt Romney, campaign announcement speech, Stratham, New Hampshire, June 2, 2011.

“conflict between the men who possess”
: President Theodore Roosevelt, “New Nationalism,” speech delivered August 31, 1910.

“Here in Kansas”
: President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas,” December 6, 2011.

“Market ideas moved out”
: Daniel T. Rodgers,
Age of Fracture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 10 and 76.

“Ultimately, inevitably, the route to real change”
: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Occupational Hazards,”
New Yorker
, November 7, 2011.

A
Washington Post
/Pew Research Center poll
:
Washington Post
/Pew Research Center, “Support for Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements,” October 24, 2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/support-for-occupy-wall-street-and-tea-party-movements/2011/10/24/gIQAJyFxDM_graphic.html
.