Paranoia Strikes Deeper

[There Is No Spoon]

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Actually, it’s the noise a great political party makes when it loses what’s left of its mind. And it happened — where else? — on Fox News on Sunday, when Mitt Romney bought fully into the claim that gas prices are high thanks to an Obama administration plot.

This claim isn’t just nuts; it’s a sort of craziness triple play — a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia. It’s the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot. But now the gas-price conspiracy theory has been formally endorsed by the likely Republican presidential nominee.

...

If and when he wins the nomination, Mr. Romney will try, as a hapless adviser put it, to shake his Etch A Sketch — that is, to erase the record of his pandering to the crazy right and convince voters that he’s actually a moderate. And maybe he can pull it off.

But let’s hope that he can’t, because the kind of pandering he has engaged in during his quest for the nomination matters. Whatever Mr. Romney may personally believe, the fact is that by endorsing the right’s paranoid fantasies, he is helping to further a dangerous trend in America’s political life. And he should be held accountable for his actions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/opinio...WCRZewyPFA

[azmouse]

Also from that article:

Quote:At least part of the answer must lie in the way right-wing media create an alternate reality. For example, did you hear about how the cost of Obamacare just doubled? It didn’t, but millions of Fox-viewers and Rush-listeners believe that it did. Naturally, people who constantly hear about the evil that liberals do are ready and willing to believe that everything bad is the result of a dastardly liberal plot. And these are the people who vote in Republican primaries.

I've been hearing and reading this a lot, about how the Republicans are creating their own reality. Sounds to me like polite way of saying they lie. They lie about everything. They lie when the truth would serve them better. They lie because they have no accomplishments of their own to tout. And they lie because they know if the truth were known no one in their right mind would be Republican.

[pappy]

Quote:It’s the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot.

OMG!

Mitt = Gen. Jack D. Ripper. Take away his rain water and grain alcohol before he launches his strategic bombers.