Despicable Them

Paul Krugman's column in the NYT this morning basically calls the GOP the party of evil.  The republican congressional majorities' pathetic attempts to eviscerate Obamacare is cartoonishly over the top.   To seek to deny millions of people health care so the .01% can have a little extra pocket change is mind boggling unless you accept one or the other theories of what has become of a major political party.  As Krugman posits, most of these people are just evil.  They have spent a lifetime practicing for these moments and by the flying spaghetti monster they are going to enjoy this frisson of pure malevolence.  My theory is that a minority of bigoted, racist, misogynist people have self selected themselves as members of a party which has enabled their worst instincts.   These are the people Reagan harangued with stories of "welfare queens" and subsequent leaders derided as "those people".  As the democratic party has steadily become the hope of people of color, women, gays and others left out of the republican fantasy, the divergence of view between the two parties has become a vast gulf of misunderstanding.   The future is not looking good for the GOP as demographics overtake it, but in the meantime it can do a lot of damage to the American experiment.