In response to the usual ad hominem and substantively unserious pestering from his critics, Paul Krugman says "Hell no!":
Would I Please Respond?
I get a lot of comments along the lines of "Would you please respond to the criticism of your work in ____?"
Um, no. Do you have any idea how many articles there are out there attacking me? I literally don’t have the time to respond to them all, or even to differentiate between the usual sliming and actually interesting critiques.
What he does have time for is to express his own ideas and analysis on the issues he thinks are important. He has time to promote his informed views on what should be done on jobs, on financial regulation, on the deficit, on Social Security, on Medicare, on health care reform, on taxation, on public support of new green industries, on trade policy, etc etc.
The Republicans don't want to talk about those issues. They don't want to be forced to offer firm answers on what they plan to do about those issues. They don't want to talk about them because what they plan to do about them will not be popular if people understand what they plan to do about them.
People won't vote for them if they're forced to admit publicly, over and over again, that they don't want to do anything to help create jobs, they want to give more tax cuts to the rich, they want to let the corporations run roughshod over every citizen's rights and pocketbooks, they want to privatize Social Security, they want to end Medicare, they want to undo health reform and financial regulation, etc.
So why aren't they being forced to talk about those things, day in and day out? Why the HELL is everyone talking about almost nothing but what THEY want to talk about - an irrelevant hot-button wedge issue that no one can actually do anything about but that puts Democrats on the defensive because they're on the side of the consitutional rights of religious minorities?
The mainstream media people following the Republicans' script have assignment editors pushing them to do that. But why the HELL are bloggers falling into the trap too of talking about almost nothing else?