About a week ago, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman authored an article entitled “The Politics of Spite,” attacking the Republican party for being emotionally immature and for valuing party politics over the well being of the country. In his extremely mature article, in which he compares the Republicans to a “bratty 13-year-old”, Krugman accuses Republicans of acting based on “spite pure and simple” and alleges that they oppose everything good for President Obama, regardless of whether it’s “good for America”.
Krugman first attempts to illustrate these points by pointing out that some conservatives were joyous at the news of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympic bid. This loss, however, is so trivial that it could hardly be considered detrimental to America. Further, it is certainly not valid to extrapolate from the reactions of a few conservatives to this one issue- minuscule compared to the real problems our country faces today- the worldview and motivations of an entire political party on all issues.
Krugman attempts to give his argument weight by asserting that the Republicans’ opposition to healthcare is based largely on such purely partisan concerns. He argues that “the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare” and that this is hypocritical because it contradicts Republicans’ traditional opposition to unlimited welfare spending.
Apparently, it never occurred to Krugman that such criticisms of liberal healthcare reform were meant to showcase its hypocritical nature, to demonstrate that the Democrats’ healthcare plans may actually hurt the very people they attempt to aid-the disadvantaged who need help to afford insurance. Whether or not this is true is a question to be answered another time, but, nonetheless, the Republicans’ criticisms of healthcare reform’s potential effects on Medicare spending deserve to be treated as serious arguments that deal with an important nuance of a complex issue; they should not to be immediately disregarded as childish and irrelevant trivialities.
Krugman also failed to notice that such criticisms are hardly the crux of the Republican opposition to liberal healthcare reform. The Medicare issue has been sidelined by concerns regarding the impact of proposed reforms on insurance premiums, whether government money would be used to insure illegal aliens, whether a so-called “public option” would destroy the quality of healthcare in the US, and whether government involvement in the privately run health sector is philosophically legitimate. Any analysis of the “main GOP line of attack” regarding healthcare that does not include these issues is severely lacking and incredibly inaccurate.
Moreover, I take issue- and I think we should all take issue- with Krugman’s malicious characterization of the Republican party. This is not because I don’t think people should openly disagree with each other about political issues. It is not because I do not value meaningful political debate. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is because I value this type of discourse- which provides for the development a healthy and thriving democracy- that I oppose such generalizations and broad mischaracterizations as those found in Krugman’s article. These elements actually discourage meaningful debate by encouraging more ad-hominem-style exchanges concerned more with comparing one’s political opponents to spoiled teenagers than attempting to intellectually refute their arguments.
