Political Commentary

The "Southern Strategy" pioneered by Nixon's people ended up costing the Republicans in the long run.

And with that strategy came a political philosophy that was totally screwed up in the head. Not only was the race card stupid in the long run with all of the demographic changes in this country, but the anti-government nonsense, which wasn't so much anti-government so much as anti-government for everybody but the very, very rich, currently Friedmanism, had been discredited before with the Great Depression. This country is repeating itself again, only this time there is a network of think tanks and propaganda media outlets to back the extremist philosophy which has been such a disaster.

Oh, the GOP will come back all right, especially if Obama fucks it up. I still am not sold on his alleged "intellect"; I don't really think he has it and will have to depend on Biden and others who know what in the hell they are doing in order to fix this mess. And even if Obama did have the acumen, the problems may be too huge to fix.

It took 40 years of GOP extremism to get to this point, and it will take many years, if ever, for the country to right itself.

Michael Lind, in his book Up From Conservatism, wrote about the same thing as Paul Krugman.