This new Paul Krugman article might just drive his arch-nemesis, that crazy bastard Andy Sullivan, right over the edge. Bad timing too, as it could disrupt his breakout performance in Much Ado About Nothing. [I was as shocked as everyone else,given the title of the show, to discover this wasn't a one-man show of Crazy Andy reading his monoblogues, but Shakespeare. In leather pants.]
In the United States, by contrast, the hard right has essentially been
co-opted by the Republican Party — or maybe it's the other way
around. In this country people with views that are, in their way, as
extreme as Mr. Le Pen's are in a position to put those views into
practice.
Consider, for example, the case of Representative Tom DeLay. Last
week Mr. DeLay told a group that he was on a mission from God to
promote a "biblical worldview," and that he had pursued the
impeachment of Bill Clinton in part because Mr. Clinton held "the
wrong worldview." Well, there are strange politicians everywhere. But
Mr. DeLay is the House majority whip — and, in the view of most
observers, the real power behind Speaker Dennis Hastert.
And then there's John Ashcroft.
What France's election revealed is that we and the French have more
in common than either country would like to admit. There as here,
there turns out to be a lot of irrational anger lurking just below the
surface of politics as usual. The difference is that here the angry
people are already running the country.
