Krugman: Feel the Hate
A nice op-ed from Paul Krugman:
Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican keynote, declared that political opposition is treason: “Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.” And the crowd roared its approval.
Roared Jon Stewart, “how dare they … field a candidate … and in an election year!”
Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on … another reason, I’m sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.
He goes on to point out that, despite what Republicans want to believe, after all of their pathological hatred of Bill Clinton, that the Democrats are prone to their own excesses of executive hatred. Well, we by and large loath the current chief executive, but we are hardly nut-jobs about it. Jon Stewart made an excellent point that the people in power were screaming and yelling about the people who … aren’t in power.
What ever!
I hope the psychosis costs Bush a few points in the polls. Maybe enough that the mouth-frothing might be blamed for bringing Kerry to power. Bush comes to power when people are disenfranchised in Florida; Kerry comes to power when people are disenchanted with inexplicable hate. It sounds fair to me.
