In a class all his own...

Once again, Krugman shows us why he is The Man... better than any op-ed columnist out there, hands down.

Unfortunately, I don't really have an answer to his question at the end of his column. In part, I would cite the Republican Noise Machine that has been built up over the past 25 years. It is so effective and such a hegemony that I imagine folks on the right cannot stop themselves from abusing the hell out of it. Power corrupts and all that... look at the House: it only took the Republicans a few years of power to become far worse abusers of process and politics than the Dems ever were at the height of their power in that same chamber.

What about those who might dissent? When someone has a bazooka, you can hold quite a few people at bay... those with their hands on the controls of the right wing noise machine and the funding apparatus can ensure that the people they want get through the primaries, or that anyone else will risk getting tarred if they done hew to the party line.

The implication here is that there are a lot more "reasonable" or "traditional" conservatives out there than you think, but they have to remain hidden. That may be so, but as this current environment is persisting, a new generation of true zealots is emerging... one that needs little encouragement or threat to be what Rove and others want them to be (e.g. he College Republicans... noxious little thugs). Pretty soon it won't be a coup of small faction that has their hands on the controls, but an entire party of that faction.

And America loses out.