Paul Krugman criticized the current GOP in his latest column for The New York Times, suggesting that people “spend much of 2023 feeling nostalgic for a greedy and cynical era” in US politics.
The economist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008, said that the culture war waged by Republicans “is not just the posturing of politicians who mainly want to cut taxes for the rich” because “many Republicans who are elected today are genuine fanatics.”
And slim GOP control of the House “means the inmates are going to run half the asylums,” he said.
If Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wins enough votes to become House Speaker, then “real power will obviously rest in the hands of people like (conspiracy theory Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Krugman warned.
“And what I don’t know is how the U.S. government is going to do it,” he said. “How do you deal with people who believe, more or less, that the 2020 election was stolen by a massive conspiracy of pedophiles? I don’t know the answer, but the prospects don’t look good.