Oh My Krugman!

[kpete]

from a Great Krugman Thread:

One thing I'm seeing among moderate Republicans -- there are maybe two dozen of them, none in Congress, but are fairly prominent in the commentariat -- is nostalgia for the 1990s, which they remember as a far better era. And you can see why 1/ I mean, back then the GOP wasn't led by a personally repellent vulgarian, it was led by fine upstanding open-minded gentlemen like Newt Gingrich. 2/ Significant figures in the party didn't peddle conspiracy theories about high school students and other victims of gun massacres; they discussed substantive issues like Hillary Clinton's murder of Vince Foster 3/ They didn't take their cues from Breitbart; they relied on respectable media organizations like the Drudge Report 4/ OK, you get my point: Republicans didn't go off the deep end in 2017, or even after Obama was elected. The moral and intellectual rot goes back at least a generation; it's just that people pretended not to notice 5/

Link to tweet

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. K&Fuckin'R

[PatentlyDemocratic]

2. So true

And it’s only getting worse!

[Left-over]

23. Started with raygun admin and has gradually got worse.

[SergeStorms]

35. Bingo!

Reagan spawned Limbaugh, which spawned FAUX Noise, which spawned O'Lielly, Hannity, ad nauseum.

[lagomorph777]

39. Goes back at least to Nixon.

Saint Ronnie saw that Nixon didn't go to jail so he thought he'd up the ante with Iran-Contra.

[Docreed2003]

3. Now they have a full on 24 hr platform for their BS in the form of Faux News

[Hoyt]

4. Maybe, but they still stopped healthcare for all.

Last edited Wed Feb 21, 2018, 10:49 PM - Edit history (1)

[shanny]

34. methinks you missed his point....

of course, he only goes back to Newt, and the rot was evident long before then

[tblue37]

5. K&R for visibility. nt

[Jakes Progress]

6. Krugman. My goto man for truth.

[OhNo-Really]

7. Moral and Intellectual Rot, in short Greedy, Power Hungry Bahsteds Always

[njhoneybadger]

8. Thanks Newt. You really suck

[ffr]

9. To be replaced by open-minded new leaders like Emma Gonzales & Cameron Kasky &

David Hogg.

[Hekate]

10. Krugman: A man with a fully intact and functioning memory. nt

[Nonhlanhla]

11. I immigrated here in the 1990s

I have never known a GOP that was anything other than insane. It took me about 5 minutes after arriving in this country to figure out that I was a Dem. I needed to take only look at the GOP to run into the opposite direction.

[Rebl2]

12. Sorry Republicans in

Last edited Wed Feb 21, 2018, 10:25 PM - Edit history (2)

the 90’s were horrible too. Remember how they treated the Clinton’s? By the way, I think Gingrich was the one who started all this hatefulness toward Democrats.

[ProfessorGAC]

28. That Is Krugmann's Point

He's sarcastically reminding everyone that this started back in the the "good old days" that the few moderate republicans left yearn for.

The good old days, weren't that good either.

[The Wizard]

33. Gingrich and Frank Luntz

published a book about using language to demonize and marginalize Democrats. We have to use their words against them.
Frank Luntz, Ph.d isn't that smart. I had him stuttering and stammering with his jaw flapping up and down with one simple question: I saw him at an event where Bill Clinton was the speaker. It was in Nashua, NH during the 08 primary. "If the United States is hit with another terrorist attack under George Bush's tenure what part of Bill Clinton's anatomy will the liberal media blame?" After ducking and dodging for a few minutes he said he couldn't answer that question and then ran away.

[TheSmarterDog]

13. Can't agree. I remember Reagan. And Nixon.

[JHB]

14. I felt the need to chime in on that discussion...

...although I'd made a similar point here a few days ago (https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=10256720), so I basically copied it in Tweet form.

[SunSeeker]

15. THIS. SO THIS.

Trump did not rise in a vacuum. Reagan and Bush laid the groundwork.

[Augiedog]

16. The last decent Republican was a guy by the name of Eisenhower. He, basically, warned us about

the republicans we have today.

[Beartracks]

38. Yes. Yes he did. n/t

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

17. Yep...

... I have always said that Gingerich is what destroyed Congress. His, "Contract On America", movement brought in the, "businessman first, statesman last", class of congresscritters we see today. They worry about stuffing their campaign coffers (so they can take it with them when they quit/resign and have a slush fund) and couldn't give two hoots about good government or tax policy.

It has gotten to the point where congress critters have become so addicted to easy money, they allowed our elections to become frauds. And yes, it goes back to the advent of Gingerichism. The continuous hacking away at voting rights and the rise of election fraud.

[Beartracks]

40. And the condescending hypocrisy. Gingrich was a turning point...

... in the devolution of the Republican party.

==========

[BootinUp]

18. I wish it would go viral, nt

[dchill]

19. Yes, Paul, I get your point.

[Denis 11]

20. 1000% correct

Whenever Republican family members complain Mueller's on a unfair witch hunt all I have to say is White Water.
It's very satisfying listening to their logical gymnastics.
They have weaponized the judiciary so often they can't recognize a fair prosecution of the traitor in the Whitehouse.

[volstork]

25. If I mentioned White Water to a repub,

I'll bet half of them would have no idea what I'm talking about. It's collective civic amnesia. Richard nixon was the most vilified man in the country in 1975; in 1994, he got a hero's burial. He was a traitor, too, as history has proven.

[Danascot]

21. Nostalgia for the 1990s?

Last edited Thu Feb 22, 2018, 02:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Most of the 1990s were Clinton years. And they're nostalgic for that?

Edit - to clarify for some who misunderstood my comment, "they're" refers to REPUBLICANS. The Krugman quote was, "One thing I'm seeing among moderate REPUBLICANS-- there are maybe two dozen of them, none in Congress, but are fairly prominent in the commentariat -- is nostalgia for the 1990s, which they remember as a far better era."

I was expressing surprise that republicans were nostalgic for the 1990s since during most of those years Bill Clinton was President. I'm not bashing Democrats.

[Mike Niendorff]

22. #ExactlyThis

K&R.


MDN

[Nitram]

24. Go Krugman! Tell it like it is!

No holds barred.

[volstork]

26. Can someone please link to the thread?

I'm not on Twitter, but would like to read it if possible.

Thanks in advance.

[Lindsay]

30. The first paragraph

of the original post looks to be the entirety of his comment on the topic.

But you don't have to have a Twitter account to go to Twitter and read. If you click on the Twitter user's name in a post that displays a tweet here at DU, it's a link to that person's Twitter page. (That's assuming you're not using a work computer where Twitter is blocked.)

[volstork]

31. Thanks.

I'm not Twitter-savvy!

[Farmer-Rick]

27. Yup RepubliCONS were pretty awful even back then but...

I think what the nostalgia in the GOP is all about is the traitorous Rusian collaboration. Back then, Russia wasn't funding the GOP presidential campaign thru the NRA. They were bat shit crazy RepubliCONS, but the majority of them were not Russian operatives and moles.

[Major Nikon]

29. It's not as if they really have any choice

It's hard to run on a platform of getting ultra rich people bigger mansions, yachts, and jets.

[Hortensis]

32. Excellent. Also, 1990--end of Cold War, beginning of

civil war on Democrats.

Hard-core conservatives always know they have big enemies they must fight; and when Russia folded, an internal enemy was quickly identified.

(With the help of those intending to divide and conquer, of course.)

[retread]

36. I can't think of a single reug pres in my lifetime that could hold a candle to his Democratic

opponent. When viewed through the lens of the time they were president even "Ike" was much worse than Stevenson.

"... rarely met an intelligence operation that didn’t arouse him. He personally authorized the overthrow of Third World potentates like Arbenz , whose crime was resisting the transformation of Guatemala into a United Fruit Company fiefdom; and of Iran’s Mossadegh for daring to take literally the anti-colonial rhetoric of FDR and Truman (if free peoples could buy U.S. goods instead of from a malnourished British state, FDR reasoned, all the better). Thanks to the Dulles axis in State and the CIA, Ike received counsel unmitigated by bureaucracies that knew much more about these non-European peoples. Kinzer, who writes with force and clarity but will say in two paragraphs when one will do, savors the historical ironies, such as the prominence of Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt; Kim’s talent for deposing governments came almost fifty years after his grandfather TR brought the United States into the regime change era. The credulity of the American press, steered and cajoled by a phone call from Foster, cannot be overstated. "

"...Drunk with success, the Dulles brothers turned to Cuba and the Congo, whereupon their determined ignorance of popular unrest caught up to them at last. Belgium had done such a magnificent job purloining resources and treating its subjects as savages that the erratic, bumbling Lumumba briefly became a hero, which was a no-no to Ike. With the help of Belgians and rebels bought by CIA dough Lumumba was placed under house arrest. He escaped, was recaptured, and tortured. No evidence could exist though. Disinterred, the corpses were dismembered and thrown into barrels of sulphuric acid. When it ran out the men burned what remained. Kinzer: “The skulls were ground up and the bones and teeth scattered during the return journey. The task proved so disgusting and so arduous that both Belgians had to get drunk in order to complete it.” They completed it. The Cuba story we know well. Allen’s late life torpor meant his assistant Richard Bissell supervised the Bay of Pigs operation, planned and approved by Eisenhower in the last months of his term and accepted without question by John F. Kennedy. Keepers of the holy flames of Camelot accept JFK’s version of the events: the tearful young president seeking Ike’s counsel at Camp David; Ike gently excoriating him for not allowing dissent (for eight years Eisenhower tolerated no dissent regarding his conduct of foreign policy); JFK accepting the criticism. He should have done, received wisdom says, what Ike boasted he would have done under similar circumstances between 1953 and 1961 and somehow never did, to the despair of Hungarians in 1956: once committed, send in the goddamn army. Kennedy accepted the resignations of Allen and Bissell."

[hay rick]

37. K&R