I am enjoying this Republican primary more than I’ve enjoyed any political event in years. You know that sports fan feeling, your team’s out of the play-offs, so you can enjoy watching Aaron Rodgers shred or Rex Grossman fail without being nervous — if instead Rodgers throws 5 picks or Grossman inexplicably throws 300 yards, it’s all good.
I know this might not be your bag, baby. And I realize that Politico pieces about what Kaplan bloggers say about Republican candidates might be even less your bag, but, in the immortal words of Dennis Hopper, I find that shit fascinating. I’ve been following Jennifer Rubin’s obsessive anti-Perry jihad fairly closely and even I was surprised by these numbers:
The Washington Post’s official conservative blogger, Jennifer Rubin, has written 60 columns on the would-be conservative favorite, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, eight of them Tuesday.
Rubin tends to write long, for a blogger, and those columns add up to 38,722 words, among them “sleepy,” “hostile,” “dreadful,” “provincial,” “cloying,” and “buffoon.
Eight anti-Perry posts in one day? Thirty eight thousand words (the length of a short novel)?
There’s no way an establishment blogger on the Democratic side would get such a hard-on for one candidate that they’d attack the candidate that obsessively. It’s just a different world on the other side.
RossInDetroit
Small barrel. Big groggy fish. Waddya gonna do, just stand there?
TBogg
Just get Perry to declare his undying love for Israel and Rubin will blow him on national TV.
eemom
eight six seven five three oh niiiiiine
Spaghetti Lee
Can’t Rubin get back to doing something more wholesome, like calling for the extermination of all Palestinians?
Spaghetti Lee
There’s no way an establishment blogger on the Democratic side would get such a hard-on for one candidate that they’d attack the candidate that obsessively.
Nah, they’d just wait til he becomes president. (Tosses Obot-v-Firebagger grenade into empty room, runs out cackling.)
eemom
@TBogg:
hi TBogg! Pissed off any D-Dopes lately?
beltane
Provincial? Rick Perry is provincial? Jennifer Rubin is muscling in on Peggy Noonan’s turf here.
Cat Lady
I’d rather that song be stuck in my head than Number 9, Number 9, Number 9….
Jenny
It was overwhelming flattering to have a hit song written about me.
Dougerhead
@RossInDetroit:
I think if you listen to the shit Perry says in the debate, it’s no dumber than the stuff Romney says. Granted, it is said while snoring and pronouncing height as “heighth” but those are the only differences.
Dougerhead
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yeah, I agree.
Linda Featheringill
Freud would say that the source of her obsession was sexual attraction.
She’s been Rick-rolled. :-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Of course that raises the question of who is the left equivalent of Jennifer Rubin. Whoever that is, they’d never get hired by the Kaplan Daily or any place like it. IIRC, Jennifer Rubinhammer was hired as a reaction to the wild-eyed radical Ezra Klein being brought in, also to fill in a pro-war, pro-Israel gap left by the presence of Charles Lane, Jackson Diehl, Robert Kagan, and frequent guest appearances by Liz Cheney, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman.
RossInDetroit
@Dougerhead:
Romney at least has the presence of mind to realize he just stepped on his own dick and to pretend it didn’t happen. I get the impression Perry’s thinking one word ahead and 5 seconds ago is an unknown realm.
Jenny
So what did Parry say about Israel to freak Rubin out?
Wag
For a good time, for a good time call
8675309 make a lot more sense than 9-9-9 or 20% or any other GOP BS plan
Hunter Gathers
You obviously haven’t been reading Digby or Atrios lately. Digby makes Rubin seen tame by comparison.
Cat Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Unfortunately for them the WaPo has to publish facts on a regular basis, so given that facts have a well known liberal bias they don’t need a left equivalent to reiterate the facts, they need all those winger opinionators to spin the facts.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dougerhead:
Even if I agreed with every single thing Perry has ever done in his entire life, up to and including the “N1663rhead” rock and the call for secession, I would still vote against him for pronouncing height as “heighth.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda Featheringill:
LOLZ
Warren Terra
The word “establishment” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, Doug. Because we could all name some major-traffic bloggers on the Democratic (or nominally Democratic) side who absolutely did this in 2008 – major traffic, but not sponsored by the establishment.
@Hunter Gathers:
Not really the same thing, as they aren’t viciously taking sides in an active struggle on their own side of the aisle (criticizing the unopposed incumbent isn;t the same, criticizing Perry really isn’t). And neither are “establishment” in the sense of being employed by the Washington Post or its ilk, as Rubin is.
Warren Terra
@Wag:
Not Pennsylvania 6-5,000?
Spaghetti Lee
I’d like someone to introduce a 4-8-15-16-32-44 tax plan.
Violet
Is there a Godwin-like award for mentioning Sully? I guess he isn’t a Democrat, but his hard-on for Obama and loathing of Hillary was fairly intense. He’s pretty establishment.
Hunter Gathers
@Warren Terra: Digby and Atrios are linked to constantly on Sargent’s blog and other Dem ‘establishment’ blogs, Digby has written articles for The Hill and Al Jazeera. I consider any blogger who gets paid to write opinion pieces by the MSM (and both The Hill and Al Jazeera are establishment publications) to be members of the establishment.
And if Obama even had a token primary opponent (even if the opponent was Inanimate Carbon Rod), the both of them would fall over themselves writing about how Inanimate Carbon Rod would bring us to the Progressive Promised Land. They hate Obama with the intensity of 1000 suns.
Comrade Mary
I’d like someone to introduce a tax plan that follows the Fibonacci Sequence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet:
Really? I managed to miss all that. I never really read Sully till I started reading BJ regularly. To me, he’ll always be the man of the Decadent Enclaves of Fifth Columnists, of which I am one. And I was proved fucking right!
Cat
Maybe they just replaced Jennifer Rubin with a markov chain and forgot to change the dictionary?
Dougerhead
@Violet:
He’s a terrible misogynist, it’s out of control.
Steeplejack
Not clear whether the 38,000 words are from the eight blog entries or the 60. And I’m not getting out of the boat to find out. That’s why we (don’t) pay you to read this stuff so we don’t have to.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
And the number is 867-5309.
FYWP won’t let me edit. FYWP!
eemom
oh in the name of God, HOW have we gotten back to fucking SULLY again??
Comrade Mary
It’s a bear market?
soonergrunt
Well, when you have the public affairs staff of the Israeli embassy working for you, you can manage that kind of output.
Spaghetti Lee
@eemom:
Sully is the alpha and the omega. He is that he is. You cannot escape him, for he is all that exists. At this site at least.
AA+ Bonds
Well, she clearly wants to win the election.
I mean, she probably listens to what Karl Rove tells her, and right now the wind is whispering “Romney” through the dollar bill trees, so I suggest you start prepping your anti-Romney lines in case Perry doesn’t wreck the whole thing for him
Jenny
@Warren Terra:
But some people never got over their particular candidate losing to Obama. These people are stuck fighting a rear guard action over 2008. Now, they say it’s about policy, it’s not about their candidate losing. But if that was true, then they would give Obama credit when he passes START, DADT, Lilly Ledbetter, pulls troops out of Iraq, etc., etc., but they don’t. To the contrary they try to deny him credit, ignore the event, or marginalize the acomplishment.
Of course, it really isn’t about Obama. It’s about their own projections. They identified with Hillary’s struggle. They’re of a similar age, who endured a lot of sexism and exclusion from the all-boys-network, as well as alot of pain from their husband’s or significant other’s cheating, yet they preserved through a combination of hard work and talent, finding themseleves on the precipices of the pinnacle, only to be dealt one last devastating blow by being passed over for being too old or too plain by the lastest shinny object.
Shlemizel
Look, I know I am a gloomy gus but I really wish you all would stop acting like reelection is a sure thing. While you are getting your jollies watching the seltzer spritzing and pie-in-the-face antics for the clown car brigade it terrifies the hell out of me that one of those bozos could be sitting in the Oval Office come 2013.
Tom Levenson
@Comrade Mary: But that would be shellfish.
Dougerhead
@Jenny:
A lot of the biggest PUMAs are men, though. I don’t claim to understand it — I think Hillary would have been a mostly identical, slightly less effective (no ACA) version of Obama personally — but I think it is more complicated than you make it out to be.
Dougerhead
@Shlemizel:
I don’t think it’s a sure thing. I think if Republicans got their shit together, we’d be fucked.
AA+ Bonds
@Jenny:
I wouldn’t worry about those people until the Republicans have a candidate
AA+ Bonds
@Dougerhead:
Or less complicated, if they happen to be racist white guys.
hhex65
@Comrade Mary: As they say in Scientology, you have a “win.”
AA+ Bonds
To be clear, the people who voted for McCain “because Hillary didn’t win” were never Democrats in anything but vague theory and they are now best represented in demographics by the thin wedge of support for a Sarah Palin candidacy, worrying about them is really pointless and unnecessary, mostly the whole thing was a bombed Rush Limbaugh psy op
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dougerhead: The two most relentless PUMAs at my former regular blog hang out were a woman like Jenny describes (to a scary tee, really), and a guy who was pretty insistent that what he wanted was Bill Clinton back in the White House. I always thought the guy was (besides being deluded about the invincibility of Bubba, as many still are) a sexist, but the woman, who threw that epithet at everyone who even mildly criticized Hillary, never once challenged what I thought was the most sexist stance wrt Hillary, at least among Dems.
I agree President Hillary would’ve looked a lot like President Barack, and I think Atrios would be just as poutily and laconically Disappointed with Hillary. Though I can tell that he has adopted a lot of the language of his PUMA commenters.
jl
Important take home point (Edit: for me) of this post is that sportscaster angle to the GOP pres primary.
I noticed in the post GOPper debate clips that they have kind of like sideline and postgame interviews with the candidates. That is sooo cool!
I’m a gonna watchem from now on, breathlessly waiting for sideline insights from Rick P himself on why he fumbled that obvious comeback to a Mitt waffle.
Maybe they will wire the candidates so we can hear what they mutter under their breath. And soon, they will have interesting ‘managers’. And promo spots with the candidates promising what and how things will be settled in the next debate.
I also hope for proliferation of special hokey rules to keep things moving. Two minute rules, Rube Goldberg gizmo rules for the group hand raise response questions. (Edit: maybe they will even find some way to include ‘bonus points’)
Is it too late to join up the Balloon Juice fantasy GOP primary league? I sure hope not.
I’m totally into GOP pimaryating now.
Comrade Mary
@Tom Levenson: Not a loss, really.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Dougerhead: What worries me is that we may be even if they don’t, by the economy.
AA+ Bonds
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, that’s the thing, I know Cole has sympathy over Iraq, but Sullivan became David Horowitz for a couple years, talking about people who were right about Iraq as literal traitors, and that convinces me that he’d sell me to the Germans for a loaf of black bread, I don’t know why he gets any more time on here than David Duke except when he’s kneecapping Republicans (I would also suggest that people start reposting when David Duke has anything to say about the Republicans)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shlemizel:
Not even a little. Romney may lose some support among Southern fundie types, that could hurt him in say, Ohio, VA, NC and CO, but he will get a huge boost from the media that would make up for it. Perry, just the opposite. I don’t think anyone else is even on the radar. I think barring a major event, it will be very close, and I can’t even imagine a major event that would help Obama, and several that could sink him, from Europe to the Middle East. Nobody’s gonna pick Palin this time around.
AA+ Bonds
@Shlemizel:
None of them can be President if they’re too short to sit behind the desk
AA+ Bonds
Watching Mitt Romney run will be like watching McCain run in a weird almost-exactly-parallel 2008, he will say the same shit in front of the same backgrounds with the same weird practiced facial expressions, but he won’t even swear or anything
AA+ Bonds
That’s what Mitt Romney is, he’s Son of McCain, come to make the losers of America feel okay about bloodlust and lunacy again
Jenny
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I disagree. He would have been emotionally vested in her in order to validate his selection.
Elite progressive are no different than the average Joe-liberal.
Dr. Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, and His holiness Dr. Paul Krugman are as petulant, tribal, self centered, thin skinned, needy, resentful, etc. as anyone else.
AA+ Bonds
@Jenny:
Why don’t you hate on the left some more, can’t get enough of that here on the left, also tell us more stories about how we need to worry about Hillary’s secret revenge, that doesn’t make you look at all like a Koch plant
Jenny
@AA+ Bonds:
I really don’t worry about them because their track record in affecting elections is so poor. I’ll take them seriously the day they actually elect someone. But it’s fun to kibitz.
That said, I have no doubt that they’ll be silent during the fall campaign in order to take credit for what ever outcome. When Obama wins, they’ll claim it was due to their power. If he were to somehow lose, they say it’s because Obama didn’t listen to them. Either way they get to claim validation and vindication, which, in the end, is all a narcissist really wants.
flounder
This is the point where I think that someone needs to mention that Jennifer Rubin’s ancestors were part eggplant. /trueromance
DougJ
@flounder:
Thank you! Glad someone got the “I find that shit fascinating” reference.
AA+ Bonds
@Jenny:
I just don’t think they matter at all and worrying about them out loud is a bigger problem than they are and people should stop doing it
flounder
Dennis Hopper was my favorite actor and that is one of the greatest speeches or soliloquy’s or whatever. Ever. I would like to say he is finding peace in the afterlife, but I don’t think he would tolerate that too well. Fuck that shit, Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jenny: I would take Maddow out of that group. She’s done a lot of “This is what Obama has accomplished” pieces, kept the obstructionist focus on Republicans, and said a couple of dumb things, but overall I think she’s one of the best of the national media figures.
flounder
I just looked up True Romance on Wikipedia, and it pretty much got great reviews except for the Washington Post. I hate those guys.
Dollared
@soonergrunt: FTWFW!
Dollared
@Jenny: Ummmm, no. They are dealing in facts. Their very lack of tribalism is one of their weaknesses. If they were truly tribal, they wouldn’t be questioning The Obamalarity.
Dollared
I opened the comments thread here to suggest that Jennifer Rubin was the greatest endorsement evah for Dragon Naturally Speaking Software.
However, I think Soonergrunt has the method right, although not the source.
Step one: Open email from AIPAC.
Step two: Open WAPO submission interface
Step three: copy
Step four: paste
Step five: Look around, make sure nobody was watching, delete AIPAC mail (Keeping a solemn promise made years ago to Fred Hiatt).
Step Six: Repeat 1-5.
JenJen
Apropos of the song-based thread title, that song has driven me insane for years and has had a detrimental impact on my life.
I imagine the many Jennifers of America would concur.
There are more than a couple Jennifer songs out there, but give me “Jennifer Oh Jenny” by De La Soul or even better, “27 Jennifers” by Mike Doughty any day of the week.
To bring it full circle, Jennifer Rubin is no different from Joe Scarborough, who spews anti-Perry shit all day and blows air up Romney’s skirt. Decision’s been made.
Jenny
@Dollared: yeah, you’re right. Krugman has no opinions, he’s just a bearded spread sheet.
When Krugman called Social Security a “ponzi scheme” “that will soon be over” in 1997, he was basing it on fact.
When he wrote in the new york times that Ralph Nader “[is an] “extremist” for attacking his buddy Bill Clinton, and said NAFTA was “economically trivial”, he did so because of the facts, not because of vain refusal to to admit any mistake or because of rash views or because of his tribal loyalties to the house of Clinton.
When Olbermann spent 11 minutes screaming Hillary Clinton was trying to incite people into killing then candidate Obama, it was based on fact, not petulance.
When Hamsher does racist minstrel man caricatures, it’s because of the facts. When she teams up with Grover Norquist, it’s because the fact demand it, not sour grapes because Hillary lost.
But no, you’re right. Krugman and company are above average human frailties.
Yutsano
@JenJen: We only haz one JenJen though.
And my aunt is a Jennipher. FWIW.
Nutella
Perry continues to show remarkable speaking skills.
Djur
@Jenny: Krugman’s opinions have changed since the ’90s. He’s commented on this. I’m not sure what your point is about his opinions now, or how his more stridently free-marketeer opinions in the ’90s somehow means his current opinions are driven by ‘tribalism’.
ETA: Incidentally, that ‘Ponzi scheme’ thing is false.
Dollared
@Jenny: Wow – No difference at all between Krugman and Hamsher. Now who the fuck is being narrow and tribal? You sure give up your credibility easily…
Jenny
@Djur: my point is that krugman indeed has opinions. After all, he’s only human. The person arguing with me above said krugman only “deals in facts”.
It is ridiculous to say Krugman labeling Nader an “extremist” was based in fact. It is ridiculous to say Krugman finding Nader to be as “disgusting” as Newt Gingrich was based on fact. Those were opinions.
I’m glad to hear Paul now says he was only joking when he called social security a ponzi game. His attempt at humor certainly wasn’t apparent in the original article. Even he says it was a “mistake”.
I never said Krugman’s current economic opinions are tribal. I said his vicious personal attack on Nader for opposing so called free trade and for running against Al Gore was tribal.
The fact remains Krugman has always been an unabashed supporter of the Clintons, including Hillary’s 2008 campaign. His political opinions are colored by his political tribal loyalties to the Clintons.
Krugman is not a robot. Nor is he a saint. He’s not even a populist nor a liberal. He’s a neo-liberal. After all, he’s a Clintonite. I mean, goodness sakes, he was a staff economist for Ronald Reagan.
He’s also thin skinned, egotistical, petulant, and he hold grudges. He has no problem engaging in personal attacks. And that colors his some of his opinion columns and attitudes.
I also find if hilarious that some economic populists place Krugman on a pedestal, when he is not one of them, as he holds positions that are anathema to populism.
Jenny
@Dollared: I never said there wasn’t a difference. Of course there’s a difference–Krugman is far worst then Hamsher.
She only screwed Norquist. Krugman screwed the country shilling for NAFTA and PNTR.
Jenny
@Djur: Hilarious.
Krugman doesn’t even believe in bring back Glass-Steagall or breaking up “too big too fail banks.”
What a hoot. In Krugman’s “repeated” opinion, we shouldn’t worry about Banks Tooo Big to Fail and Glass-Steagall is an obsolete New Deal relic. And this is the guy economic populists love? What a joke.
Could it be that Krugman is dismissive about Glass-Steagall because it was his dear friend Bill Clinton who repealed it, and bringing back Glass-Steagall would only focus the role Bubba played in the crash? Or perhaps Krugman just wanted to marginalize the move because it was evil obama who proposed it’s restitution, and he didn’t want the usurper to clinton throne to get any credit?
SRW1
“There’s no way an establishment blogger on the Democratic side would get such a hard-on for one candidate that they’d attack the candidate that obsessively.”
Kind of a strange metaphor, considering that Ms Rubin appears to be of the female persuasion. Other than that, spot on.
Chet
You know that sports fan feeling, your team’s out of the play-offs, so you can enjoy watching Aaron Rodgers shred or Rex Grossman fail without being nervous—if instead Rodgers throws 5 picks or Grossman inexplicably throws 300 yards, it’s all good.
Yes, I know that feeling…WRT baseball. Lovin’ this week’s World Series, easily the best Fall Classic in a decade.
Football, though? I can’t imagine sitting through an NFL game that doesn’t involve my Lions, or that I don’t have money riding on. Hell, it’s hard enough for me to stick with a Lions game, and they’re actually having a halfway-decent season for once. (Well, save the last couple weeks, anyhow.)
Yes, I realize I’m completely out of step with the spectator-sport preferences of the large majority of my countrymen. It’s not unlike the feeling I all-too-frequently get that first November Tuesday each year.
kindness
I don’t get Rubin or the AIPAC’s obsession with Israel taking the West Bank and it’ll all be OK. Don’t they realize 1) they can’t evict the Palestinians 2) they can’t absorb the Palestinians & still be a Jewish country.
So their answer is to ignore the obvious and keep going blindly there.
Myself, I’ve taken several turns but I now feel Israel should be all of Israel, the West Bank & Gaza. I think they’d all be very surprised to find living as a non Jewish Majority doesn’t matter. Well other than they’d have to spank the ultra Orthodox & racists, but that’s coming no matter what.
Jennifer Rubin? Shit for brains. A more paletable Pam Geller, that’s all she is.
john
@Jenny:
post the rest of what he wrote:
“Still, you have to admit that the growth of the shadow system was fueled, in part, by FDIC-backed players providing credit lines and so on to their shadow-banking arms, and that the sheer size of some players has posed real difficulties for resolving crisis. So in the context of a broader financial reform, this stuff could help.
Whatever. I’m still reeling from the collapse on health care.”
You’re Jennifer Rubin, right? You’re even a hack in comments on another blog! Nice!
john
I love how “Jenny” has tried to steer the conversation from her being in the bag for Romney to “Krugman changed his mind over the last 15 years.” Hack.
Just Dropping By
This is the point where I think that someone needs to mention that Jennifer Rubin’s ancestors were part eggplant.
Aubergine libel!
Geysergazers
@Djur:
@Jenny
Speaking of credibility, quote the whole sentence to get it’s meaning. PK is actually saying that with their invention of the CFD and the CDS the Banksters have, indeed, moved beyond the reach of old Glass-Steagall:
It is clear that Krugman is assuredly arguing for new and effective Bank (and other Financials) regulation.
Daddy Love
What about Matty Yglesias and parking?
Plethded
Maureen Dowd kept going on about Obama’s elitism and aloofness throughout the 2008 primaries. None of it had any relation to policies he proposed or even to reality, but she seemed obsessed with him.
RickD
Anybody who thinks criticism from the left about Obama is due solely to lingering bad feelings about the 2008 primaries is, I’m sorry to say, a freakin’ idiot.
It is a clever way to avoid the content of criticisms, but it is wholly without merit.
As a person who supported Obama over Clinton during the primaries because he thought Obama was the more liberal of the two, it’s been a huge disappointment to find out that he’s just another establishment-worshiping DLC “centrist”.
So go on, keep clapping louder as he extends the Bush tax cuts and lets Eric Cantor decide what legislation gets passed. Let’s sit and watch while he puts together a commission to forward the cause of cuts to Social Security. And if I have a problem with that, it’s because I favored Clinton? What the hell??
Have you taken a look at the unemployment rate lately?
Oh, Jenny? If you can’t figure out that Krugman doesn’t think that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, you’re a freakin’ idiot. There’s no point arguing a point that obvious to anybody who reads Krugman. Your argument is ludicrous. If you can’t tell when Krugman is making fun of the Tea Party, you’re probably not qualified to have any kind of opinions displayed in public.
kindness
@RickD:
You realize of course you just described the vast bulk of pundits & columnists here in the US, don’t you?
Stoic
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “Pro-Israeli Rightists” than “Pro-Israel”? Just saying.
Paul in KY
@kindness: They feel they can evict the Palestinians, given the right impetus.
kindness
@Paul in KY: They’d be wrong. Not even AIPAC & all the cowards on Capitol Hill could save them.
And I don’t need to quote the Geneva Convention here. If Israel did something that stupid they’d have an international war on their hands (one without US involvement).
Netanyahu is a fanatic and he does want to exhile Palestinians, but he can’t.
lgm
I’m a liberal Democrat. I find this post and comment thread disturbing. I have to ask, where DougJ when Democratic bloggers were taking sides for Clinton or Obama in 2008? Has DougJ read high traffic liberal bloggers trashing Obama’s moves to the right? I see that blinders and memory lapses can happen to anyone.
And what’s with all the hardon references? Can’t you guys (of either gender) keep your minds off sex long enough to post on a political blog?
Mysticdog
@Jenny:
Fail reading comprehension? That quote just says that those things won’t magically cure everything by themselves, a la “silver bullet” metaphor. Which, if you’ve been paying attention, is true. A lot more needs to be done. Krugman has long written about how those changes help lead to this mess.
Also, Atrios and Digby have given credit in those instances where credit is due, and have given the benefit of the doubt on occasion, especially at the beginning of the term. Obama has simply failed on most accounts to be an effective leader of the country or party; if it wasn’t for the foreign policy successes, there would have been almost no accomplishment at all. He has the power to do a lot more; hell, just recess appointing all those missing judges would be an enormous step forward, and help reverse 8 years of putting corporatists on the bench.
Northern Observer
@Jenny: @Jenny: Yeah yeah yeah. Jen, I think you’re reading yourself into Krugthulu’s mind and personality. He’s not a political animal like you. He’s an academic first and formost who tried to help his country with the knowledge he aquired studying economics for 30 years. Any admin can call on him and he will serve. The guy is such a treasure because he lets the facts inform his political positions, not the other way around. A lot of political people don’t get that about him and focus on the political effects of his statements rather than the economic reasoning behind them. He isn’t on the same playing field your on. The guy is integrity personified. He could of stayed a quiet guy or joined Makinaw as a pro business hack, but he took a stand against public policy lying when he took on candidate Bush’s tax cut program (Fuzy Math). And BTW Nader is an extremist. I am not sure what other definition would fit. Maybe narcissist. Meglomaniac. The most successful right wing agent of all time? He undid his entire consumer safety legacy with his Presidential mania in 2000.
melior
Since Jenny Rubin showed up in comments to “defend” herself using tried-and-true rightwing troll techniques (hey, look over there… it’s a Nobel Prize winning economist whose columns undermine my GOP talking points! Here, these selective misquotes clearly point directly to liberal puppetmaster KKKlinton, thereby proving my point…) will she tell us what we’re all itching to know:
How much does that work out to per word?
sleepyhostile
sleepy,” “hostile,” “dreadful,” “provincial,” “cloying,” and “buffoon”
Clearly she’s talking about Obama here
DFH no.6
@Dougerhead:
Republicans will probably “get their shit together” (more or less) with Romney.
In another (non-dire-economic-straits) situation, Obama likely kicks his ass.
As it is, Obama will have an uphill battle, instead (not quite “fucked”, I think, but not far from it). This time, Obama represents the status quo, and the status quo ain’t good.
Romney, on the other hand, will be presented by the right-leaning media as the hoped-for change agent, and particularly one with business bona fides (just what we need to get things moving again).
Further, he’ll be described by that same media as “presidential” (remember that 747 that could land on his manly shoulders?).
And, compared to the rest of the clowns he’ll appear not only not-insane, but positively reasonable.
That’s why I continue (probably quixotically) to root for Perry.
Paul in KY
@kindness: Who is going to fight Israel over them evicting the Palestinians?
I can tell you they don’t give a shit about the UN or any resolutions.
Comrade Javamanphil
Just popping in to make note of the fact that Ben Smith of Politinooooooooooooooo appears to read BJ. Nice link there, Doug.
Party Like It's 2008
Actually Krugmran
1. Was for Edwards and only switched to Hillary after Edwards dropped out. Even then he mostly attacked Obama rather than saying nice things about Hillary.
2. Krugman was very miffed that he got beaten out by Laura D’Andrea Tyson for the econ advisor job back when Clinton was elected.
So he is anything but a “tribal Clinton loyalist.” He liked Hillary over Obama b/c he took seriously all of Obama’s “kumbaya” post-partisan BS and was horrified. And rightly so!