But the newly energized grass roots don't appear ready to let Republicans off the hook for supporting recent government bailouts of automakers, banks and Wall Street investment giants, even if Obama and the Democrats were the primary targets for their anger.
When conservative Rep. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.) addressed a mid-April anti-tax rally in Greenville, members of the audience booed and turned their backs to the speaker. His crime against conservative orthodoxy: Barrett had voted in late 2008 for the Wall Street bailout bill.
"I know you are mad," Barrett told the crowd. "I know you are frustrated and I hear it. You may boo, you may turn your back. But I have devoted my life for the conservative cause. We are fighting for you and I will never turn my back on you."
Cornyn's status as a party campaign leader was no shield against catcalls at an Austin, Texas, rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, one of the conservative groups involved in the town hall protests. Although he joined them in railing against "more spending and more government" in Washington, Cornyn was called a "traitor" and heckled throughout his speech to the Fourth of July crowd, apparently because of his support for the Wall Street bailout.
Another strand of the conservative movement burst onto the scene at a town meeting held this summer by moderate GOP Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware. He was confronted by a woman asking why Congress was not more aggressively pursuing claims that Obama was not born in the U.S. He drew a hailstorm of boos and roars when he insisted that Obama was a U.S. citizen.
In many places, tensions between conservative activists and the party establishment has gone beyond catcalls to frontal political assaults. In Florida, conservatives have backed a primary challenge to Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the U.S. Senate. He is viewed with suspicion from the right because of his support of global warming legislation and Obama's stimulus plan. In Indiana, even a Republican as conservative as Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., - a leader of the effort to impeach President Clinton - is being opposed by several Republicans who say he has lost touch with the cause.
Inglis, who first came to Congress as part of the 1994 conservative class, now faces a primary challenge because of recent departures from party dogma on the Iraq war and some environmental issues. After he was beseiged by activists at this month's angry, unruly town meeting, Inglis sent the YouTube clip of the confrontation to his supporters and donors with the message: "This is what the opposition looks like."
Have a question about health care?
Send an e-mail to healthcarereform@
healthkey.com and Tribune Newspapers will publish answers to the most frequently asked questions.
