Monday, April 25, 2005
Krugman on BushCo's Divorcement from Reality
Paul Krugman nails it, as always. This time, he explains how BushCo is divorced from reality -- and how reality has finally come around to bite Bush and the Republicans on the ass:
Since November's election, the victors have managed to be on the wrong side of public opinion on one issue after another: the economy, Social Security privatization, Terri Schiavo, Tom DeLay. By large margins, Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and Mr. Bush is the least popular second-term president on record. What's going on? Actually, it's quite simple: Mr. Bush and his party talk only to their base - corporate interests and the religious right - and are oblivious to everyone else's concerns. [...] The point is that people sense, correctly, that Mr. Bush doesn't understand their concerns. He was sold on privatization by people who have made their careers in the self-referential, corporate-sponsored world of conservative think tanks. And he himself has no personal experience with the risks that working families face. He's probably never imagined what it would be like to be destitute in his old age, with no guaranteed income. The same syndrome has been visible on cultural issues. Republican leaders in Congress, who talk only to the religious right, were shocked at the public backlash over their meddling in the Schiavo case. Did I mention that Rick Santorum is 14 points behind his likely challenger? [...] Democracy Corps, the Democratic pollsters, say that there is a "crisis of confidence in the Republican direction for the country." As they're careful to point out, this won't necessarily translate into a surge of support for Democrats. But Americans are feeling a sense of dread: they're worried about a weak job market, soaring health care costs, rising oil prices and a war that seems to have no end. And they're starting to notice that nobody in power is even trying to deal with these problems, because the people in charge are too busy catering to a base that has other priorities.Bush and his backers are so rich that they've been able to warp the normal rules of political time and space. But they've done so badly at actual governance that even the massive amounts of money and power they've amassed won't be enough to insulate them from political reality for much longer. This is why Harry Reid is storming ahead, being the pugnacious Senate leader of the Democrats, while Nancy Pelosi charges ahead in the House and Howard Dean is cheerfully doing the door-knocking grunt work that is rebuilding the Democrats from the ground up. Somebody's going to have to pick up the pieces when BushCo's nightmare reign is over.
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