Remember "Pitchfork Pat" Buchanan, the sensation of the 1992 and 1996 Republican presidential primaries? Buchanan gave President George H.W. Bush a scare in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. Then in 1996, after declaring, "The peasants are coming with pitchforks!" Buchanan scored an upset over Bob Dole in New Hampshire.

A similar uprising is happening now. The country is going through another surge of right-wing populism. Much of it has a familiar feel -- the anti-Washington sentiment; the anger over taxes, spending, and Big Government; the tinge of extremism.

But this time, no candidate is leading it. Instead, it's being driven more by conservative media figures and bloggers. And although the Republican Party ultimately rejected Buchanan in the 1990s, today's GOP seems eager to embrace populist anger.

What's fueling it? Partisanship may be a factor, but it seems far from dominant. The "tea party" protesters who rallied in Washington on September 12 appeared to be just as angry at the Republican establishment as they were with the Democrats. Leading Republican politicians were not invited. Participants had few words of praise for George W. Bush or John McCain.

Former President Carter called racism the "overwhelming" factor in the protests. "There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president," he said. Three days later, President Obama played down race. "Are there people out there who don't like me because of race? I'm sure there are," he said on CNN. "That's not the overriding issue here."

"Health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy." --President Obama

Economic frustration? That's certainly part of it. But the people who have been showing up at town halls and protest rallies do not appear to be the army of the unemployed or the legions of the downtrodden. They are mostly solid, middle-class Americans angry over the direction the country is taking. Candidate Obama said last year of economically hard-pressed voters, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." But guns and religion and race and anti-trade sentiment do not appear to be the major issues fanning the current populist fervor.

Anti-government sentiment is. As Obama said on CBS News on September 20, "I think what's driving passions right now is that health care has become a proxy for a broader set of issues about how much government should be involved in our economy." The most revealing banner displayed at the September 12 Washington protests said, "Not a race issue. Not a party issue. Just an old American freedom issue." It's Big Government, stupid.

Anger at Big Government has been building for more than a year. It started when the financial crisis hit during the final months of the Bush administration. Conservatives had become increasingly resentful of Bush's Big Government conservatism and record deficits. The government bailouts -- supported by the Bush White House and approved by a Republican Congress -- triggered an intense populist backlash. The bailouts were the perfect symbol of establishment insiders protecting themselves: Washington rescuing Wall Street.

Then Obama became president, bringing with him an ambitious agenda that entails the biggest expansion of government spending and regulation since the 1930s: a huge jobs program, energy reform, an unprecedented expansion of the federal role in education, mortgage assistance, and bailouts of the banks and automobile companies. And now plans to remake the nation's health care system are on the table.

The country experienced a populist backlash led by radio priest Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was put in place. In the 1960s, Alabama Gov. George Wallace led a populist backlash against Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the civil-rights revolution. Then came the 1990s, with Buchanan's "pitchfork brigades" when Bill Clinton was president. And now we have another such backlash.

They seem to happen when 1) The Republican Party fails, as it did under Herbert Hoover and Barry Goldwater and both Bushes, and 2) The Democrats propose an ambitious government agenda, as they did under FDR, LBJ, Clinton, and now Obama. As for distrust of Big Government, that's nothing new. It's what the United States was founded on. And it is always there.

This article appeared in the Saturday, September 26, 2009 edition of National Journal.

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