Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday’s New York Times that the Republican Party is fleeing from reality:
Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.
Election defeats should act as splashes of cold water, arousing political parties from their slumber and forcing them to get their bearings. But modern Republicans have completely lost theirs:
How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in evaluating one of Mr. Ryan’s plans, came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”
What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.
If their 2012 election defeat did not act as a splash of cold water, the Meltdown of 2008 should have. Instead, Republicans keep insisting that what the nation needs is lower taxes and more concentration of wealth. That prescription is not just political suicide. It’s insane.
Unfortunately, because legislation has to get through the Republican controlled House, the United States could be in for a long stretch of insanity.