Krugman the Irrelevant
By contact@legalinsurrection.com (William A. Jacobson) on ny times
Paul Krugman is completely clueless.
I'm watching him now on Sunday Morning with Barbara Walters. Krugman bemoans the fact that in our democracy, unlike in western Europe, the House cap-and-trade and health care bills already would be law. Krugman blames it all on that messy thing called the Senate, which effectively requires a 60-vote super-majority to pass significant legislation
Krugman then dismissed Scott Brown's victory as due to Martha Coakley failing to know her Red Sox, and people liking Brown.
Krugman epitomizes everything wrong with the self-appointed intelligentsia, mostly on the left but some also on the right.
The Senate filibuster rule is one of the great things about our democracy. The super-majority rule is one of the things which prevents the extreme on either wing of the political spectrum from running roughshod over the policital minority.
And Scott Brown's victory owing just to the Red Sox and likability? Krugman needs to get out into the country (not just the countryside).
The victory for Brown was a victory for the majority, which rejects the very policies Krugman wishes already were law. Krugman's real objection is not to Coakley's lack of baseball knowledge, but to the audacity of the democratic process to produce a result with which Krugman disagrees.
In these past couple of weeks, as the columnists at the NY Times have digested the Brown victory, I have come to have much more respect for Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins than for Krugman. At least Dowd and Collins, in their own unique ways, acknowledge and understand the what took place in Massachusetts.
Krugman still is on is personal jihad to prove that he is smarter than the rest of us. Which is why he is becoming more and more irrelevant.
Added:
In a later segment of the show, Krugman stated that the reason the health care legislation failed was that the American people didn't understand the bills due to misrepresentation by Fox News. (Roger Ailes, who was on the show, shot Krugman down on that.) Krugman lamented that people did not read the NY Times more thoroughly.
Krugman not only is clueless, he is so enamored with himself that he is incapable of understanding that the health care legislation failed precisely because the American people did understand the big points. People may not have understood all the nuances and details, but neither did the members of Congress who didn't read the bill and who learned important details only when exposed by bloggers and "right-wing" news organizations. |
