Paul Krugman: A Party Agrift

The grift that keeps on grifting:

A Party Agrift, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: This is not a column about Donald Trump.

It’s not about the fraudulent scheme that was Trump University. It’s not about his history of failing to pay contractors, leading to hundreds of legal actions. It’s not about how he personally profited while running his casinos into the ground. It’s not even concerned with persistent questions about whether he is nearly as rich as he claims to be, and whether he’s ever done more than live off capital gains on his inheritance.

No, my question, as Democrats gleefully tear into the Trump business record, is why rival Republicans never did the same. … Were they just incompetent, or is there something structural about the modern Republican Party that makes it unable to confront grifters?

The answer, I’d argue, is the latter. …

Sometimes the political link is direct: dire warnings about the coming depression/hyperinflation, from which you can only protect yourself by buying Ron Paul’s DVDs (the “Ron Paul curriculum”) or gold shares hawked by Glenn Beck. …

There’s also a notable pattern of conservative political stars engaging in what is supposed to be activism, but looks a lot like personal enrichment. For example, Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC gives only a few percent of what it raises to candidates, while spending heavily on consultants and Mrs. Palin’s travels.

Then there’s the issue of ideology. If your fundamental premise is that the profit motive is always good and government is the root of all evil, if you treat any suggestion that, say, some bankers misbehaved in the run-up to the financial crisis as proof that the speaker is anti-business if not a full-blown socialist, how can you condemn anyone’s business practices? …

Even as the newspapers are filled with stories of defrauded students and stiffed contractors, Republicans .. are going all-out in efforts to repeal the so-called “fiduciary rule”… Paul Ryan … has even made repealing that rule part of his “anti-poverty plan.” So the GOP is in effect defending the right of the financial industry to mislead its customers, which makes it hard to attack the likes of Donald Trump. …

In the months ahead Republicans will claim that there are equivalent scandals on the Democratic side, but nothing … rises remotely to the level of even one of the many Trump scams… They’ll also claim that Mr. Trump doesn’t reflect their party’s values. But the truth is that in a very deep sense he does. And that’s why they couldn’t stop him.