Michael Barone commentary: Here’s why GOP balks at health law



A different historical analogy is more helpful.

Consider a law that was bitterly opposed but was accepted by opponents to a much greater extent than even many of its advocates expected: the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


There was reason to believe that this law would be hard to enforce, as recent experience of the Freedom Riders showed.

Starting in May 1961, civil-rights groups organized biracial groups to ride on interstate bus lines in the South.


Attorney General Robert Kennedy called for a “cooling-off period.” The Kennedy administration eventually got Southern governors to provide police escorts for Freedom Ride buses and not to interfere if the Riders were arrested.

I have often wondered what those who favored equal rights but urged protesters to go slowly were thinking. They must have believed that protests would provoke violence, and that most of the people hurt would be black.


Why not? The way the law was passed.

In May 1963, Bull Connor turned police dogs and fire hoses on protesters in Birmingham. TV news brought the story into Americans’ living rooms.

A feeling that this was intolerable swept most of the nation. In June, President Kennedy endorsed a civil-rights bill including public accommodations.


Supporters got support from a majority of House members needed to bring the bill to the floor after members heard from their constituents over the winter break. The bill passed with bipartisan support, 290-130.


Full compliance with the public-accommodations section was not immediate. In Georgia, Lester Maddox closed his restaurant rather than serve blacks, and then was elected governor, narrowly, in 1966.

But after Congress acted in such deliberate fashion, and the Supreme Court upheld the law, white Southerners largely acquiesced. Minds and hearts had been changed.

Obamacare has been a different story.

The poorly drafted bill was passed almost entirely on party lines, and in the face of majority negative public opinion.


Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.