Krugman on The Intellectual Bankruptcy of The GOP

The party of ideas.  Stale, re warned ideas that were terrible the first time around.  The only place the GOP demonstrates any creativity in their thinking is in the outlandish lies and fake scandals they cook up. 

New And Not Improved

"The truth is that conservatives have a big intellectual problem. Thirty-five years ago they really did have something new to say — basically, the claim that tax cuts and deregulation would produce widely shared economic gains, a rising tide that would lift all boats, etc.. That hasn't happened, of course, although the Paul Ryans will never admit it and just keep pushing for more of the same. The new conservatives are at least aware that things haven't quite worked out as promised — but they're not willing to challenge fundamental assumptions. So what they write conveys a kind of desperate feeling — they're trying to tweak the paradigm at the edges, but without straying over the invisible border that would make them basically modern liberals. If you look at the health care chapter, for example, it does two main things. First, it tries to trash Obamacare with borderline dishonest claims — it will leave 31 million American uninsured! It will cost $2 trillion! If you look at the CBO estimates (pdf) these claims are based on, you learn that about a third of those remaining uninsured are unauthorized immigrants the law was never intended to reach, a significant number will be uninsured because Republican-controlled states are refusing to expand Medicaid, and the rest will be uninsured because for whatever reason they choose not to sign up. Oh, and it's $1.8 trillion, fully offset by cost savings and additional revenue."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/new-and-not-improved/

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