Obamacare Foes Using Shutdown Echo South’s Nullifiers

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.