They shoot Krugmans, don't they?

Sometimes I can't believe that little twerp has a column. Well, let's review his latest sewage.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder.

Don't forget about perjury and obstruction of justice.

And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment - at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

And yet the GOP-led Congress still managed to pass a federal budget (i.e. their job.)

Now it’s happening again - except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”
To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

The Limbaugh-Beck-Fox News = all Republicans is a trope so tiresome it barely warrants a response. I've never listened to Rush Limbaugh and never watched Glenn Beck. But I don't believe every single person at Beck's rally was a Republican, just as I don't believe that only Limbaugh fans oppose the Cordoba House.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?

Take your pick, Paulie: high unemployment, a yawning trade imbalance, crummy stock market, feckless foreign policy, a health care bill nobody likes. I mean, is this a serious question?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate.

We did? I thought "Selected not elected" came later, but my memory is hazy.

Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

There you have it: racism and xenophobia.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed…

No, you're certainly not, since America is chock full of everyday people outside your Princeton office who are deeply concerned about the direction of the country. Krugman spares not a word for their legitimate worries about the future. Instead, he babbles on for 200+ words (snipped) about the wealthy few who oppose the statist agenda. Call it the Paris Hilton gambit.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

It says something that the very people who made anti-Bushism the creamy nougat of their political ideology now want him to come back. Unless he had already, whereupon they'd be wailing about his unwanted meddling in national affairs.

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” - several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony.

What, like the fruitless investigation into Bush's dismissal of the U.S. attorneys? Stop being such a crybaby, Paul. In the words of Obama, "I won." Now get ready for some hearings.

We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

Yeah, that would be bad.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither.

Is that why rage is "flourishing?" Never mind, rhetorical question.

In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

Krugman acts as if Americans view this as a bug and not a feature.

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

Paul K has been tireless with his endless string of blog posts and columns about how the stimulus should have been bigger. I strongly urge Obama to take his advice and propose another round of stimulus spending since the last round was so awesome.