PAUL KRUGMAN: Rise in extremism tied to economy (barf alert)

...it's becoming ever more apparent that real power within the GOP rests with the ranting talk-show hosts.

...Suddenly, the takeover of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists has become a story (although many reporters seem determined to pretend that something equivalent is happening to the Democrats. It isn't.)...

The right's answer, of course, is that it's about outrage over President Barack Obama's “socialist” policies — like his health care plan, which is, um, more or less identical to the plan Mitt Romney enacted... Many on the left argue... that it's about race, the shock of having a black man in the White House — and there's surely something to that.

But I'd like to offer two alternative hypotheses: First, Republican extremism was there all along — what's changed is the willingness of the news media to acknowledge it. Second, to the extent that the power of the party's extremists really is on the rise, it's the economy, stupid....

...the hard right has dominated the GOP for many years. Indeed, the new Maine platform is if anything a bit milder than the Texas Republican platform of 2000, which called not just for eliminating the Federal Reserve but also for returning to the gold standard, for killing not just the Department of Education but also the Environmental Protection Agency, and more.

Somehow, though, the radicalism of Texas Republicans wasn't a story in 2000, an election year in which George W. Bush of Texas, soon to be president, was widely portrayed as a moderate.

Or consider those talk-show hosts. Rush Limbaugh hasn't changed: His recent suggestion that environmentalist terrorists might have caused the ecological disaster in the Gulf is no worse than his repeated insinuations that Hillary Clinton might have been a party to murder. What's changed is his respectability...

When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right's markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma.

Paul keeps spinning his anticapitalist screeds. Nothing but lies.

Barney Frank 2003: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis"(STEPHEN LABATON - NY Times September 11, 2003)

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
--snip---
"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
"I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing," Mr. Watt said.

Rise in extremism

I was contemplating the Specter/Sestak race here in PA this morning as I was driving around to polling places for a campaign I've volunteered for.

When Specter left the GOP, it was decried as a triumph as extremism in that part.

But if far-left Sestak wins tomorrow, it will be lauded as the will of the people coming through against an entrenched career politician.

Krugman is just continuing that double-standard with this column.

RE :” True, that's not how it was supposed to work. When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naive: Voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments — and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right..... So where does our political system go from here? Over the near term, a lot will depend on economic recovery. If the economy continues to add jobs, we can expect some of the air to go out of the tea party movement.”

Krugman barf ping. It was this moron that claimed massive government debt spending was the way to ‘create jobs’. But now he is saying that our logical reaction to his and Obama’s economic failures should be to support/reward Obama and democrats, but we are just too irrational for that, instead going with our feelings.

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PAUL KRUGMAN: Rise in extremism tied to economy big government.