{"id":34421,"date":"2021-05-09T16:28:33","date_gmt":"2021-05-09T20:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=34421"},"modified":"2021-05-20T23:58:40","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T03:58:40","slug":"rick-santelli-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/rick-santelli-rant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rick Santelli Rant and the Politics of Resentment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What was the Rick Santelli rant about? How did it affect Obama’s strategy in the 2008 financial crisis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick Santelli’s rant happened when Santelli, a conservative commentator, went on CNBC and complained about relief programs for struggling homeowners. It proved that wealthy CEOs saw themselves as the victims of the crisis, not the creators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about Rick Santelli’s rant and what happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rick Santelli Rants on CNBC<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Despite these early successes, organized opposition to the Obama administration was mounting in the spring of 2009. <\/strong>Although it was not politically or economically feasible to enact a \u201cMain Street bailout\u201d for hard-hit small businesses and individuals (as many critics on the left urged the administration to do), Obama\u2019s team still recognized that it was important to provide targeted relief to struggling Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a particularly grim time for U.S. homeowners, who\u2019d seen 20 percent of the value of their homes wiped out in the housing market<\/a> crash. The American landscape, especially in the Sun Belt States of Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, glittered with abandoned homes and ghost-town subdivisions, whose owners had simply walked away from mortgages worth more than the value of their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, the Obama Treasury Department introduced initiatives like the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) designed to help distressed borrowers refinance their homes, reduce monthly payments, and avoid foreclosure. While these programs could not make those with underwater mortgages completely whole, they could help reduce a great deal of financial stress for working families. Moreover, they would benefit those homeowners whose mortgages weren\u2019t<\/em> in trouble\u2014after all, everyone\u2019s <\/em>property values suffer when a neighbor defaults on her mortgage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, there was concern from political operatives like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel that even mild, ameliorative programs like HAMP could spark a conservative backlash. Those homeowners who deemed themselves to be \u201cresponsible\u201d might blanch at the idea of their taxpayer dollars being used to \u201cbail out\u201d the distressed mortgages of their \u201cirresponsible\u201d neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rick Santelli Rant<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

These sentiments were given voice on February 19, 2009 on the financial news network CNBC, on-air commentator Rick Santelli delivered a blistering criticism of the administration\u2019s relief programs for distressed homeowners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his remarks, Santelli said that the federal government was encouraging irresponsible behavior by providing relief to those who\u2019d taken on risky mortgages. In his view, this would only encourage more recklessness by unqualified borrowers\u2014whom Santelli characterized as \u201closers.\u201d Perhaps most importantly for the future, Santelli called for a \u201ctea party\u201d of aggravated taxpayers to protest against what he saw as the government\u2019s wrongheaded spending priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a similar phenomenon to Obama\u2019s experience with the Wall Street CEOs: wealthy, powerful (and predominantly white) conservatives who believed themselves <\/em>to be the victims in a crisis that was largely of their own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obama and his political team recognized that this form of resentment was a powerful and effective staple of right-wing politics going all the way back to the anti-welfare politics of figures like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and 1980s. Underneath the demagoguery about \u201cundeserving\u201d recipients of government programs and \u201cwelfare queens\u201d was an implicit message: White taxpayers were being robbed of their property in order to give unearned handouts to African-Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obama knew that this racially infused \u201cbeggar-thy-neighbor\u201d style of politics had always posed a threat to American liberalism<\/strong>\u2014and that such attacks could have a renewed salience because of his race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was the Rick Santelli rant about? How did it affect Obama’s strategy in the 2008 financial crisis? Rick Santelli’s rant happened when Santelli, a conservative commentator, went on CNBC and complained about relief programs for struggling homeowners. It proved that wealthy CEOs saw themselves as the victims of the crisis, not the creators. Read more about Rick Santelli’s rant and what happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33,275],"tags":[274],"class_list":["post-34421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-people","category-politics","tag-a-promised-land","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Rick Santelli Rant and the Politics of Resentment - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Rick Santelli rant proved what Obama already knew. Wall Street was playing victim, and racial resentment ran deep. 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