Politics
Image by Damien Baldino via Flickr
In his New York Times Op-Ed piece this morning, regular contributor Paul Krugman is perhaps overly eager in his quickness to assign to the entire Republican Party the “emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.” There, though he may be generally correct in using that characterization to describe the reactionary response of a handful of media blowhards to the city of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics (a loss for Obama is a win for Rush!), he ignores what looks to be the central internal issue for the G.O.P in advance of the 2010 mid-terms and, worse, in so doing, commits a classic U.S. lefty (if there really is such a thing) sin: underestimating the capability and draw of the conservative movement.
Krugman seems to have missed Lindsay Graham’s on-going take-down of Glen Beck. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reported on Sunday, Graham, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday “didn’t mince words or, for that matter, duck the question when he was asked why he said Beck was ‘aligned with cynicism’ at a conference earlier in the week.” Nope. Instead, he continued his attack, implying that the teary-eyed Fox News anchor was a backward-looking malcontent who “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.” What’s more is that this came on the heels of a Politico report (perhaps also overlooked by Krugman) that detailed the attempts of aging Senator and Obama-’08-shellac-ee John McCain “to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image.” “Those familiar with McCain’s thinking,” writers contributor Alex Isenstadt, “say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”
Let’s take a minute to put all of this together. Graham, a key McCain ‘08 lieutenant, and McCain, a veteran conservative — who, let’s remember, is that, despite any of his claims to maverickness — are taking steps to tell the voters that, as loud, ugly, and (therefore) fun to look at and listen to as the Becks, Limbaughs, and Savages of the world are, they are not a part of the Republican establishment — and so their hyped-for-the-public overreactions can’t be assigned to the greater Republican party. In fact, it’s fair to say that a good portion of the elephant clan seems so nauseated by the appearance of such a possible characterization, they are getting ready to do battle to make their less-angry vision of the G.O.P the dominant race of the red-stater.
Which is to say that, superficially at least, Krugman has committed only a sin of the semantically debatable variety. And that would be a whatever if it wasn’t for the fact that, by failing to understand the complexity of the issue — read: making the character of the over-dramatic attention whore the target of his attack — he attempts to marginalize something that, if the U.S. left were a cohesive, strategically-capable group (you know, something that might even resemble a political force), would not be so easily dismissed. Why, Krugman should have asked himself, do the rightist media personalities so cater to the emotional, angry side of the voting populace? And better yet, why is that segment of the population so angry — particularly so at a party that is such a non-threat that it hasn’t been able to seat a capable executive since 1968?
But instead, Krugman settled for the easy, unprobing approach — the one that succeeds in only engaging the most superficial attributes, and therefore a quick dismissal, of a very complex and very capable organization. The trouble for the Democrats is that, in doing so, he joins a long list of underestimating political hacks, who, in their failure to completely understand the opposition are almost assuredly setting themselves up for another quick loss of power. In this light, Krugman’s mischaracterization goes far beyond something that might be debated at a cafe, at least if the Dems ever want to achieve true post-partisanship.
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2 Comments
Well put.
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