Krugman: The 1% created a monster. The origins of national insanity

Concerning the government shutdown over Obamacare, Krugman writes, “There’s a definite class-war aspect to this fight, pitting the interests of the 0.1 percent against those of lower-income families.” But according to Krugman, that doesn’t explain the whole story, because “the 0.1 percent, by and large, are pleading with the GOP to knock it off.” He then notes that even Karl Rove, “more or less the designated defender of upper-class privileges,” is complaining over not being listened to.
Ultimately, Krugman concludes, the radical right is like Frankenstein’s monster, with the hyper-wealthy playing the role of the doomed mad scientist.


http://www.salon.com/2013/10/01/krugman_the_1_percents_created_a_monster/

Here is the Krugman article:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics — it is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

It’s very important, I think, to realize that while right now the GOP seems to have been taken hostage by its radical wing, the general strategy of responding to a lost election by trying to gain through blackmail what the party couldn’t gain at the polls was a consensus decision, arrived at way back in January. If the leadership is now dismayed by where it finds itself — leading a party of “lemmings with suicide vests” — it has only itself to blame.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/the-economics-and-politics-of-chaos/