Opinion: It’s 2009 again, or feels like it. The protesters then were inveighing against Obamacare; the protestors now are striking out against the coronavirus lockdowns
It’s 2009 again, or feels like it.
The tea party that was so powerful in the Obama years, roiling Republican Party politics and making stars out of the likes of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, sputtered out and was subsumed by the Trump movement in 2016. The change was exemplified by the House Freedom Caucus, founded in 2015 and defined by its hard line on government spending, reliably lining up behind Donald Trump who has pursued a notably expansionary fiscal policy—with huge budget deficits—even before the coronavirus crisis.
One of its architects, the editor of the religious journal First Things, R.R. Reno, has sounded like one of the libertarians he so scorns during the crisis. First, he complained that he might get shamed if he were to host a dinner party during the height of the pandemic, although delaying a party would seem a small price to pay for someone so intensely committed to the common good.
What’s happened during the lockdowns is that the natural distrust that populists have of experts has expressed itself in opposition to government rules. Being told what to do by epidemiologists and government officials wielding all-caps SCIENCE as their authority has been enough to bring tea party-era liberty back in vogue.
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