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Tue 8 Oct, 2013 08:32 am
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Boehner Bunglers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 6, 2013
The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?
The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
But there’s one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they’re also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.
To see what I’m talking about, consider the report in Sunday’s Times about the origins of the current crisis. Early this year, it turns out, some of the usual suspects — the Koch brothers, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation and others — plotted strategy in the wake of Republican electoral defeat. Did they talk about rethinking ideas that voters had soundly rejected? No, they talked extortion, insisting that the threat of a shutdown would induce President Obama to abandon health reform.
This was crazy talk. After all, health reform is Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement. You’d have to be completely clueless to believe that he could be bullied into giving up his entire legacy by a defeated, unpopular G.O.P. — as opposed to responding, as he has, by making resistance to blackmail an issue of principle. But the possibility that their strategy might backfire doesn’t seem to have occurred to the would-be extortionists.
Even more remarkable, in its way, was the response of House Republican leaders, who didn’t tell the activists they were being foolish. All they did was urge that the extortion attempt be made over the debt ceiling rather than a government shutdown. And as recently as last week Eric Cantor, the majority leader, was in effect assuring his colleagues that the president will, in fact, give in to blackmail. As far as anyone can tell, Republican leaders are just beginning to suspect that Mr. Obama really means what he has been saying all along.
Many people seem perplexed by the transformation of the G.O.P. into the political equivalent of the Keystone Kops — the Boehner Bunglers? Republican elders, many of whom have been in denial about their party’s radicalization, seem especially startled. But all of this was predictable.
It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies.
For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere else. But this wasn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, the party’s attitude toward policy — we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news — was bound to infect political strategy, too.
Remember what happened in the 2012 election — not the fact that Mitt Romney lost, but the fact that all the political experts around him apparently had no inkling that he was likely to lose. Polls overwhelmingly pointed to an Obama victory, but Republican analysts denounced the polls as “skewed” and attacked the media outlets reporting those polls for their alleged liberal bias. These days Karl Rove is pleading with House Republicans to be reasonable and accept the results of the 2012 election. But on election night he tried to bully Fox News into retracting its correct call of Ohio — and hence, in effect, the election — for Mr. Obama.
Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn’t enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it’s still a party dominated by wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts. And now that party’s leaders have bungled themselves into a corner.
Everybody not inside the bubble realizes that Mr. Obama can’t and won’t negotiate under the threat that the House will blow up the economy if he doesn’t — any concession at all would legitimize extortion as a routine part of politics. Yet Republican leaders are just beginning to get a clue, and so far clearly have no idea how to back down. Meanwhile, the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a terrible thing.
@Advocate,
Unfortunately, I think Krugman is spot on in his analysis.
I say "unfortunately" because the implications of "(the) have no idea of how to back down" can mean devastation for our economy...and for our nation.
The common folk backing the Republicans and the Tea Party agenda are beyond comprehension. That political party has ceased to make any sense at all.
@Frank Apisa,
Krugman hit it on the head right here:
Quote:So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.
@Advocate,
What is Krugman's take on Israel?
@Finn dAbuzz,
I don't know. Let us know should you find out.
@Frank Apisa,
Quote:Unfortunately, I think Krugman is spot on in his analysis.
I say "unfortunately" because the implications of "(the) have no idea of how to back down" can mean devastation for our economy...and for our nation
i have a idea, how about the D's go talk to some hostage negotiators and find out how they deal with hostage takers who want to back down? i have a feeling that they have faced this situation and know what to do. "THERE WILL BE NO NEGOTIATION HERE!" probably is not it.
Krugman consistently gets it right. Unfortunately these lemming minded teabaggers seem determined to take us all down in the name of getting their own way.
Janis Ian
If the government shutdown shut down cable TV, it would be fixed immediately due to millions of irate sports fans making their voices heard...
@hawkeye10,
Hostage negotiators don't let the hostage takers get away with it.
By the way, the administrations response has been, "release the hostages and we will negotiate."
@parados,
Quote:By the way, the administrations response has been, "release the hostages and we will negotiate."
all I know is what I see on the cop shows, but I have a feeling that is not how the pros do it. cant we at least send in some pizza's, and pretend like we care about what they want?
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
all I know is what I see on the cop shows,
That seems to be where you get your political knowledge as well.
@Finn dAbuzz,
Quote:What is Krugman's take on Israel?
Finn, the ultimate single-issue poster... :-)
@hawkeye10,
Quote:all I know is what I see on the cop shows, but I have a feeling that is not how the pros do it. cant we at least send in some pizza's, and pretend like we care about what they want?
As long as they get shot down at the end of the movie, tea baggers can get all the pizza they want...
@Advocate,
I would have thought you would know considering your zealous defense of the Jewish State.
@Finn dAbuzz,
All I see from you and the other Israel haters is stupidity and bias.
@Frank Apisa,
He is, Frank. He even described you and that large majority of USians - the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Paul Krugman
The Crisis of Zionism
Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism.
The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.
But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.