washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Krugman: GOP Hucksters Can’t Bring Base Back to Reality

From Paul Krugman’s column, “Republicans Against Reality“:

For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.
At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.

It was always a stretch to believe that those who hate government pathologically could govern well. And now that the inmates have seized control of the asylum, increasing numbers of sane voters are realizing that the only cure for this particular form of lunacy is to defeat it at the polls.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.