As l'Affaire Ryan evolves from "Danger, Will Robinson" to farce, Krugman has begun to evolve in his understanding of something he now actually calls "movement conservatism." Out loud.
And the astonishing willingness of the media to praise Ryan's plan as Shinola when it's clearly something else, has moved Krugman from wondering why people are so easily confused, to beginning to understand, for the second time, that "movement conservatism" is indeed a movement, with operatives, agents, and an institutionalized reward system. (In the leftie world, those institutions, like AEI, are called the "wingnut welfare system" and it takes no brains at all to know that Paul Ryan will never hurt for a paycheck the rest of his life.)
So I found the following paragraph, from this Krugman post, to be enlightening in a "state of the Krugman" sort of way. Ignore the point and note the language.
[M]y take is that the hermetic nature of movement conservatism — its loyalty tests, its closed intellectual world where you get all your alleged facts from Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, the “wingnut welfare” that ensures that defeated politicians always have a cushy job waiting at a think tank somewhere, always made it vulnerable to this kind of spin into policy craziness.Movement conservatives are known bad actors, guaranteed insincere even when right. Krugman sees this when it comes to politicians, which is the subject of the post. But he's blind to operatives in the media, though he's closing in on them, as this other post shows.
Nevertheless, it's fascinating watching this journey he's taking. At present the state of the Krugman is clear, with patches of still-inexplicable cloudiness.
GP
