Every time I read his stuff, I feel more and more like a screaming OneDirection fan, except for Paul Krugman, instead of an improbably gorgeous British boy band. In his latest op-ed for the Times, Springtime for Grifters, he explains eloquently yet concisely, how the Republican brand has morphed into a legion of grifters, finding new and innovative ways to steal from their supporters with little to no consequences.
Beyond the swirly orange time portal for more.
Much has already been made of Republican Almost-front-runner and notorious seller-outer of innocent Popeye's "Organization" employees, Ben Carson's complete and utter rewrite of history at the Republican debate regarding his relationship with Mannatech, the supplement company on the hook for about $7 million to settle false practices claims. Carson denied any involvement, claimed they used his imagine without permission, and the whole (sane) world collectively slapped their foreheads at the brazenness of it all, considering it was an out and out lie.
Enter Paul Krugman, who exposes, or at least explains how this is hardly a new phenomenon.
And this doesn’t just go for outsider candidates like Mr. Carson and Donald Trump. Insider politicians like Marco Rubio are simply engaged in a different, classier kind of scam — and they are empowered in part by the way the grifters have defined respectability down.
He lays out three distinct levels of scam, though they are generalized and could probably be expanded on in great detail.
First you have the "snake-oil vendors":
...in which marketers use political affinity to sell get-rich-quick schemes, miracle cures, and suchlike.
...As the historian Rick Perlstein documents, a “strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers” goes back half a century. Direct-mail marketing using addresses culled from political campaigns has given way to email, but the game remains the same.
Just slightly above that base level of BS, are what Krugman refers to as "marketing campaigns...tied to what purports to be policy analysis. This relates primarily to the ongoing scare tactic of runaway inflation that Glenn Beck notoriously used to hawk Goldline products, and even Ron Paul has been using for decades to little result.
Perhaps most damning, are the revelations about the straight up political scams. Krugman refers to a report published by the times:
The report found that the bulk of the money these PACs raise ends up going to cover administrative costs and consultants’ fees, very little to their ostensible purpose. For example, only 14 percent of what the Tea Party Leadership Fund spends is “candidate focused.”
But worry not, fellow Americans, for lest you think such things would be ruinous for all involved, we all know that there's an easy get-out-of-jail-free card just waiting to be slammed on the table.
You might think that such revelations would be politically devastating. But the targets of such schemes know, just know, that the liberal mainstream media can’t be trusted, that when it reports negative stories about conservative heroes it’s just out to suppress people who are telling the real truth. It’s a closed information loop, and can’t be broken.
I highly recommend reading the
whole piece, it isn't terribly long and goes into greater detail about even some of the more "reasonable" republican candidates.