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New York Times’ Krugman: Tea Party Was Always About Racism

   DailyWire.com
Lecture by Nobel Prize winner economist Paul Krugman in Athens on "Europe: What next?È, Invited by the Research Institute of Policy and Strategy for Development and Governance (ADGI-INERPOST) An event of Megaron Plus. On Friday, April 17, 2015
Photo by Panayiotis Tzamaros/ullstein bild via Getty Images

On Wednesday, leftist economist Paul Krugman of The New York Times flat-out called the Tea Party racist, barking, “It was always, from the beginning, about racial anger; opposition to big government only to the extent that it helps Those People.”

Krugman was responding to a story in The New York Times, his home paper, that argued that the Tea Party was no longer interested in reducing the national deficit. The article stated:

In the late summer of 2009, as the recession-ravaged economy bled half a million jobs a month, the country seemed to lose its mind … Ten years since that summer of rage, the ideas that animated the Tea Party movement have been largely abandoned by Republicans under President Trump. Trillion-dollar deficits are back and on track to keep growing. The Affordable Care Act has never been repealed, and Republicans concede it may never be … (The Tea Party) ignited a revival of the politics of outrage and mistrust in government, breathing new life into the populist passions that continue to threaten the stability of both political parties. Even if the Tea Party’s ideas are dead, its attitude lives on.

Krugman ranted on Twitter:

Oh, God. Are we still pretending that the Tea Party was about small government and concern about budget deficits? It was always, from the beginning, about racial anger; opposition to big government only to the extent that it helps Those People. Academic research confirms the obvious. The idea that the Tea Party had something to do with notions of fiscal responsibility was a fairy tale told by centrists who didn’t want to acknowledge the true ugliness of the modern U.S. right. And any notion that the Tea Party failed in its objectives is nonsense. It was all about racial animosity; and now they have a president who legitimizes and feeds that animosity. They don’t care about deficits, and never did.

Krugman’s hatred of conservatives runs deep; only days before the 2016 election, Krugman tweeted, “At a fundamental level, the GOP decided a long time ago that there were no boundaries, no legitimacy to opponents. This was supposed to be in the service of right-wing ideology. Predictably it has gone out of their control and opened the door to thuggish authoritarianism.”

In June 2018, Krugman wrote, “The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.”

In 2011, after the massacre in which six people were murdered and Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head and critically wounded, Krugman brought the Tea Party and Sarah Palin into the discussion, writing:

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy. And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

H/T Twitchy

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