The Kroog On Republicans

Paul Krugman takes a shot at explaining the modern GOP.

Today’s G.O.P. is, after all, very much a minority party. It retains some limited ability to obstruct the Democrats, but has no ability to make or even significantly shape policy.

Beyond that, Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.

But here’s the thing: the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. And they could return to power if the Democrats stumble. So it behooves us to look closely at the state of what is, after all, one of our nation’s two great political parties.

One way to get a good sense of the current state of the G.O.P., and also to see how little has really changed, is to look at the “tea parties” that have been held in a number of places already, and will be held across the country on Wednesday. These parties — antitaxation demonstrations that are supposed to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution — have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so.

But everything that critics mock about these parties has long been standard practice within the Republican Party.

Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

The only difference is that it took some people those 10 to 15 years to figure out that the Republicans are mostly useless loudmouths with zero ideas. But it also took the Democrats an equally long time to start presenting real ideas and fundamental policy changes. Clinton was a good guy in many respects, but he was basically a center-right red state Democrat, as was Carter before him, as was LBJ before him. Obama is still the most progressively liberal President we've had since, well, the last economic disaster we had.

Given the choice of real ideas presented well and obstructionist nonsense from a party that decimated the economy, even the American people will listen to reason.

But, Krugman wisely warns that Democrats should keep a gimlet eye on the Republicans.

For now, the Obama administration gains a substantial advantage from the fact that it has no credible opposition, especially on economic policy, where the Republicans seem particularly clueless.

But as I said, the G.O.P. remains one of America’s great parties, and events could still put that party back in power. We can only hope that Republicans have moved on by the time that happens.

And they will have moved on...to a whole new level of crazy. Obama still has to fix the economy. If he doesn't, the GOP will be given another chance.

And they'll finish the job they started with Dubya.