On Monday, New York Times Official Chief Partisan Hack™ Paul Krugman took to the op-ed pages to blame Republicans for the demise of the republic. Krugman rightly notes that our republic seems to be undergoing a profound change; he is correct when he states, “Republican institutions don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms. And tyranny, when it comes, can flourish even while maintaining a republican façade.”
But he then blames the rise of tyranny not on the Democrats who decided to implement an administrative state under the jurisdiction of the president, or who concluded that it was worthwhile to set up unelected judges as a super-legislature capable of overriding the Congress, or who cheered as FDR and LBJ and Barack Obama continuously expanded the power of the presidency.
No, says Krugman, it was those dastardly members of the GOP:
[Now] we have a president-elect who openly asked Russia to help smear his opponent, and all indications are that the bulk of his party was and is just fine with that…. Winning domestic political struggles is all that matters, the good of the republic be damned.
Leave aside the fact that Krugman completely ignores Obama’s open embrace of Russian interference in the 2012 election, or that Obama ignored Russian interference in this election in the hopes of maintaining his own popularity by kowtowing to Vladimir Putin. No, it’s all about Republicans and Donald Trump.
Krugman continues by stating that it undermines the principles of republicanism for the Republican legislature in North Carolina to pre-emptively strip power from the governor after losing an election – but of course, the legislature is not the source of tyranny. The executive is.
Krugman concludes:
My question, instead, is why one party’s politicians and officials no longer seem to care about what we used to think were essential American values. And let’s be clear: This is a Republican story, not a case of “both sides do it.”
That’s simply false.
Republics do not die because one party destroys them. Republics die because both parties decide it’s easier to abdicate power to a centralized government that can “get things done” than grind it out. Hitler did not merely rise to power because the Nazis didn’t care about democracy – the demise of the German republic happened under his predecessors, and Hitler took advantage of the situation that predated him (Germany did not have a popularly-formed government for several years before Hitler, opting instead for a presidential government serving at the pleasure of General Paul von Hindenburg). The Roman republic fell gradually, not all at once. An entire nation must be complicit in the destruction of republicanism for republicanism to fall. And that requires a mentality that states that centralization of power is fine, so long as the power occasionally falls to someone you like.
That’s a bipartisan problem, not just a Republican or Democratic one, although historically, Democrats have opted for the notion of centralized power far more than Republicans. What makes the current GOP unique is the fact that so many members are willing to overthrow their own beliefs in separation of powers and small government policy in favor of a strongman who will “get things done.”
But it’s certainly convenient for Krugman to blame the fall of the republic on Republicans. Then he doesn’t have to look in the mirror after spending an entire career pushing an increasingly powerful and unaccountable government.