The Krugmaster
by matt at 11:57 am on February 6th, 2009 in Congressional Man Date, EconomyAppeasing the centrists – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
…centrism is a pose rather than a philosophy. And to support that pose, the centrists are demanding $100 billion in cuts in the economic stimulus plan — not because they have any coherent argument saying that the plan is $100 billion too big, not because they can identify $100 billion of stuff that should not be done, but in order to be able to say that they forced Obama to move to the center.
Which raises the obvious question: shouldn’t Obama have made a much bigger plan, say $1.3 trillion, his opening gambit? If he had, he could have conceded to the centrists by cutting it to $1.2 trillion, and still have had a plan with a good chance of really controlling this slump. Instead he made preemptive concessions, only to find the centrists demanding another pound of flesh as proof of their centrist power.
I’m starting to think that Ben Nelson is really just jealous of all the attention that Joe Lieberman has received over the past few years, and is going to do whatever it takes to out-buffoon him.
sarabeth wrote:
I’m just curious whether Krugman said anything like this 4 weeks ago, when Obama unveiled his grandmaster strategy for the stimulus bill:
Because I distinctly remember going:
Posted 06 Feb 2009 at 2:56 pm ¶
matt wrote:
dunno. but I do know krugman wanted 600B per for 2 years
Posted 06 Feb 2009 at 3:17 pm ¶
Ned wrote:
This compromise is a farse. There is nothing bipartisan about it. Simply picking off a couple of Republicans does not make something bipartisan.
Posted 07 Feb 2009 at 12:37 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
It’s not the 3 Republican Senators who have agreed to support the bill that makes it bipartisan, it’s the ugly footprints of Republican “thinking” that can be seen all over the bill that make it bipartisan.
Posted 07 Feb 2009 at 1:07 pm ¶