Who's to blame

I have no great love for the Republican party, and I'm certainly not one to baselessly advance the idea (an axiom to some) that the platonic version of Republicanism is some sort of ideological gem. But I do take the position that George W. Bush is as accountable for turning the GOP into the rancid shitfest it is today as is any other corrupt hand we've seen over the years. That includes DeLay. Paul Krugman seems to differ:

I’ve been looking at the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and I’ve come to a disturbing conclusion: maybe we’ve all been too hard on President Bush.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Mr. Bush has degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.

But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors. In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it.

My take on this is that "non-movement conservatism"--the semi-libertarian philosophy that supposedly undergirds the Republican party--is so ripe to be corrupted by business interests that nobody should be surprised that we find ourselves where we are. But getting here did require people to make the sorts of alliances that have wrought all of this corruption.

And inasmuch as I think that process began with Delay, I think that Bush--with his own business ties and base-pandering election strategy and cronyist tendencies and corporate structuring and on and on--really helped to crystallize it. And that's why all of the candidates seem so demented. They have very little wiggle room to think outside the movement and do so at the risk of losing all party support. 

Comments

[anon]

scary