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Bigger than George W

"As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power here in the U.S., Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, "I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror"? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration's failure was simply a matter of bad luck - either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the Republican Party, which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans' stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the Republican Party decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: After the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to "make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second."

So begins an op-ed piece by Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman in the NY Times [republished in the IHT] reflecting on George W, the Republicans and how times have changed. Continue reading here.

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