Obamacare Foes Using Shutdown Echo South’s Nullifiers

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-11/obamacare-foes-using-shutdown-echo-south-s-nullifiers.html

The Tea Party-inspired drive to derail Obamacare is anchored in a place where opposition to the federal government is as old as the nation: the American South.

The current fight, a budget standoff that threatens the creditworthiness of the U.S, has vestiges of the secession from the union that started in South Carolina and led to the Civil War. It carries echoes of the nullification crisis over tariffs in the 1830s and the so-called “massive resistance” movement to oppose desegregation of public schools in the 1950s.

In each of those fights, led by Democrats who then dominated the region, Southerners said they were overrun by Northerners hostile to their culture in ways that undermined their freedom. Now, their forebears are Republicans and, while the region’s prevailing party affiliation has changed, the basic orthodoxy has remained.

“I think there are continuities, obviously, between the Tea Party today and the longer tradition of Southern politics that dates back upward of two centuries,” said Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia in Athens.