Patterico's Pontifications

12/12/2010

Orwellian Krugmanism

Filed under: General — Karl @ 9:40 pm



[Posted by Karl]

On Sunday, after making the oh-so-parochial admission that he usually does not bother looking at the Washington Post [Epistemic closure alert! -K] , NYT columnist (and former Enron advisor) Paul Krugman took issue with Dana Milbank’s praise for Obama in standing up to other progressives angry at his proposed bipartisan tax deal:

This is a hopeful sign that Obama has learned the lessons of the health-care debate, when he acceded too easily to the wishes of Hill Democrats, allowing them to slow the legislation and engage in a protracted debate on the public option. Months of delay gave Republicans time to make their case against “socialism” and prevented action on more pressing issues, such as job creation. Democrats paid for that with 63 seats.

Krugman thinks that is an Orwellian rewrite of history:

Um, that’s not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn’t what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican “moderates” weren’t negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.

There are at least two problems with Krugman’s claim. First, the Baucus “Gang of Six” started their deliberations on June 17, 2009. The Gang was essentially done by September 8, 2009. That’s less than 3 months. Once you consider the Senate was in recess from August 10 through September 7, Krugman’s “many months” turns out to be barely “months.”

Second, during those “many” months, someone was telling us the fate of ObamaCare was being undermined by relatively conservative House Democrats and centrist Democratic senators who opposed (or wanted to water down) the proposed government-run insurance plan:

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure.

Someone wrote that on June 22, 2009 — less than a week after the Gang started meeting. That someone did not work for the Washington Post and presumably does not live in the “Village” Krugman thinks is inventing a narrative about the intra-party struggle over the so-called “public option.” Indeed, that someone, who claims to have followed the debate closely, seems to forget the Senate bill later almost died when Maj. Ldr. Harry Reid tried inserting the government-run plan into it, only to be met with a filibuster threat from Sen. Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats. That someone is engaging in the all-too-Orwellian tactic of rewriting history to his liking, ignoring not only his past admissions that the delay was caused by fighting within the otherwise ample Democrat majorities, but also that those evil centrists were correct all along that there were not enough votes in the Senate for a government-run insurance plan.

–Karl

24 Responses to “Orwellian Krugmanism”

  1. Mr. Krugman is a smart guy.

    He’s probably rich. He probably lives in a big house.

    He gets to write an op-ed in The New York Times.

    He probably goes to a lot of parties and sometimes he gets to talk to the President about weighty issues.

    As a Nobel-laureate, his economic ideas carry a lot of gravitas.

    I know this woman. She works hard as a librarian in the youth department at the library. It’s what she does.

    She lost a young, adult child to a car accident. I cannot nor do I understand what that loss means to her and her husband.

    I’m fairly sure she’s a liberal. We don’t discuss politics.

    Nonetheless, she spends every day helping kids in a manner that, quite frankly, is extraordinary.

    I’m glad I know her. I hope to never meet Mr. Krugman.

    Ag80 (e828a4)

  2. Uruguay is a lying demonic midget who I would not trust to balance our checkbook.

    Actually, we don’t really use checks anymore, so that was more a turn of a phrase.

    JD (eb5afc)

  3. Uruguay? Krugman. I have no idea what happened there.

    JD (eb5afc)

  4. Shut up, peasants, and believe what your betters in the gentry class tell you.

    Murgatroyd (fd5fcd)

  5. Karl – Thanks. One of fun things about Krugman is that he has turned into such a hack that it is usually possible to find where he has contradicted himself in the past on a position or a statement. Tom Maguire takes great relish in exposing his lies and flip flops.

    daleyrocks (c07dfa)

  6. I think that some pundits, Patterico, don’t even keep track of what the have written in the past. Like trolls.

    And for the same reason. It’s not about facts, but feelings.

    Eric Blair (6037ec)

  7. Whoops. I assumed that Patterico wrote that post. Apologies, Karl.

    Eric Blair (6037ec)

  8. Paul Krugman – using the same powers that won him a Nobel Prize for Economics, no doubt – tells his blog readers: “David Broder declared that Katrina would boost Bush’s image, by showing his forcefulness as commander-in-chief — and then spent the next three years predicting a Bush comeback just around the corner.”

    That’s some keen economic analysis.

    Wesson (019671)

  9. Someone wrote that on June 22, 2009

    It’s rather clear that someone here wants to confuse the “libtard reasoning process” by introducing relevant facts.

    That someone ought to realize that facts are irrelevant to the “libtard reasoning process”.

    Ron Jeremy, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86)

  10. [Krugman] is a lying demonic midget who I would not trust to balance our checkbook.

    I wouldn’t trust him to balance HIS checkbook.

    The person who gave him his Nobel was rather clearly the same nighttime janitor who rigged the one for Obama.

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (9eeb86)

  11. Hey Karl, how often does you mom let you out of the basement?

    Krugman is right. The so-called “left wing” democrats made compromise after compromise, while the centrist democrats like Baucus, Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, and Landrieux made demands after demands.

    The “left wing” had to give up any kind of public option, even “medicare for those over 55”.

    This made Obama-care just like the conservative’s so-called Romney-care. Obama passed a republican health care system.

    You may think it will be repealed. But I doubt that will happen, it will make too much money for the insurance companies.

    Ok folks, your Mommy just made breakfast. Go eat.

    Marchais de Rocco (588a39)

  12. Krugman was a decent macroeconomist up until around 1999, but their public attitude was such, that both
    he and Friedman, made me consider anarchism when
    they plugged ‘the free market’ he’s been an insufferable hack ever since.

    narciso (6075d0)

  13. Rocco, all you’ve done is establish that you can’t read.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  14. How many Republicans voted for zerocare?

    Can a brother get a waiver?

    lovey 2010 9/10 (bf9cd6)

  15. Rocco,

    Uncalled for.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  16. Rocco eats his boogers.

    JD (0d2ffc)

  17. This idea that because Romney did something wrong makes Barcky doing something wrong x50 acceptable is just a patently silly meme of the leftists.

    JD (109425)

  18. Rocco is trying to distract from the fact that Krugman is continuously in the process of destroying his own credibility. That Rocco is willing to aid Krugman in proving that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia is no surprise.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  19. Krugman is right. The so-called “left wing” democrats made compromise after compromise, while the centrist democrats like Baucus, Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, and Landrieux made demands after demands.

    Rocco, does this change the votes in the Senate and House?

    No?

    OK… so how is Krugman right?

    This legislation, and your more awful version you didn’t get, ARE NOT WHAT AMERICA WANTED. That was always the core problem with it. Sorry your leaders couldn’t be rulers any worse than they already were.

    BTW, I don’t see any reason to be rude to Karl.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  20. Rocco – If Krugman was right back then, it means he’s wrong now. Get it?

    daleyrocks (c07dfa)

  21. Rocco,

    As you opened with an ad hominem, I am unsurprised that nothing you wrote contradicts a word of what I wrote. You, like Krugman at the time, blame centrist Democrats for not wanting the public option. You are being consistent, whereas Krugman is now trying to blame centrists for negotiating with Republicans, which is a different complaint (and one not supported by even Krugman’s old columns).

    RomneyCare exisiting does not mean that the GOP is a monolith nationally. And RomneyCare’s failures are already exposing the flaws in the approach it takes to the problem.

    Repeal is also OT, but since you were not around in 2009(at least not under that name), let me assure you that I posted often about AHIP’s interest in passing ObamaCare. I would add that if the GOP succeeds in removing the mandate in the next 4 years, AHIP will be much less interested in keeping the program (as will everyone in a decade or two, when our debt/GDP ratio triggers another financial crisis).

    Karl (928df3)

  22. Krugman is a large self important gas bag–and the gas in the bag has a certain “barnyard” whiff.

    Mike Myers (0e06a9)

  23. RomneyCare was passed in liberal Massachusetts by a Democrat-run Statehouse. It was a liberal-written bill, and Romney tagged along to his discredit. Kennedy loved it. It’s ironic that the Krugman fan would tag that as representative of some “Republican” POV, while also blasting ObamaCare as anything but what it was: very left-liberal pile of tax-spend-and-regulate Obamunism.

    If the Democrats wanted a different bill from what they passed, they should have passed something different. They did what they did because that is what they wanted. They took as long as they did not because they were not ambitious enough, but because they were too ambitious.

    Barack Obama (8d33ce)


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