Same As It Ever Was

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal should avoid antagonizing his moral and intellectual superiors quite as cheaply as he did Paul Krugman in his Friday WSJ column, "Best of the Web Today." In this morning's NY Times, Krugman responds to Taranto's taunts, which include a juvenile riff suggesting Krugman stole the title of his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, from dead Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, who among others also published a book by that title. (If there's anything these conservative creeps love, don't you know, it's a chance to dance on Paul Wellstone's grave.)

Channeling Digby on one of her favorite themes, Krugman reliably pins the entire history of movement conservatism onto the donkey's ass of this Bush White House. From godfather Barry Goldwater's 1960 anti-government The Conscience of a Conservative (and Goldwater's support of the likes of Sen. Joseph McCarthy), through right-wing icons William F. Buckley and Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney and Oliver North and Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, right up to today's divisive, warmongering and S-CHIP vetoing President George W. Bush, Krugman shows that American movement conservatism has ended up just as it was always destined to be: the same as it ever was. (May David Byrne forgive him.)

Go read all the details.