"The Great Divide" - Krugman 12/31/07

The last day of 2007 saw Krugman continue his recent fixation on anti-Obama positions. The column focuses on the GOP candidates economic policies generally, and the transmogrification of McCain specifically. The overall tenor of the piece, however, is a rebuke of the "transcending partisanship" argument promoted by the Obama campaign. Krugman discusses how the GOP nomination process shows that every contending candidate (with the notable exception of Huckabee) for the nomination has fallen in line with Bushonomics.

If [bipartisan solutions] were possible, Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani — a self-proclaimed maverick, the former governor of a liberal state and the former mayor of an equally liberal city — would seem like the kind of men Democrats could deal with. (O.K., maybe not Mr. Giuliani.) In fact, however, it’s not possible, not given the nature of today’s Republican Party, which has turned men like Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney into hard-line ideologues. On economics, and on much else, there is no common ground between the parties.

It is amusing that a scant four years ago, there was significant discussion about whether or not the Dems were going to create an unelectable partisan out of a brutal nomination process, and now it appears that the GOP is actually heading down that road. The economy is struggling -- though analysts say it could go either way -- and the average American is feeling the pinch of falling home prices and stagnant wages. Cozying up to the Bush administration's policies doens't seem to be the most intelligent general election move, but I tend to agree with Krugman's assertion that this is what is to be expected out of the current Republican Party and it's blind "free market" economics.