I Agree with Paul Krugman

I find myself in unfamiliar territory agreeing with Paul Krugman's Times column today, but I've been in stranger pickles before.

In a sarcastically-penned opinion piece he says that Bush really isn't doing anything we should not have expected. He's being a loyal current-day Republican. And the current crop of '08 candidates continue to prove where the party base was.

He cites an incident at the other night's GOP debate from South Carolina that I found particularly disturbing at the time. Brit Hume posed a hypothetical situation to the candidates that was very close to a "24" secnario.

Imagine that you are the President and we know that we have some suspects in custody who have knowledge of an imminent blowing-up of several shopping malls. Would you condone torture to get the information out of them that could prevent this?

John Wayne McCain proved to be the only one not willing to throw red meat to the crowd and endorse just about free-reign to stop the hypothetical plot.

First, to use this question itself as some sort of indicator of job fitness is about as ridiculous as asking me what I would do in the hypothetical case of being in a position to end world hunger if I would just cut off my own left arm. The situation is so absurd (to actually have enough information to know that an attack is coming and who the individual is that we can pry the information from) that it was beneath even Fox. I can only think that they used it as a not-so-subtle ad for the television show owned by the network.

All the other candidates used this as an opportunity to give broad endorsements of just about anything that can be justified as patriotic defense of the country. Frankly, I'm surprised that one of them didn't just go ahead and call the enemy "towel heads" since they seem to think that, anyway.

Back to Krugman's column today....he points out that, based on the applause the candidates received for their moronic answers to this equally stupid question, the GOP base is a bunch of neanderthals, so who can blame Bush for feeding them what they want.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to agree. My party left me behind.