Monday, February 22, 2016

Marco "Roboto" Rubio's Crank Economics




Interesting ideas, indeed.  Paul Krugman writes today about the "crank economics" of easily- rattled lightweight gusano Sen. Marco "Roboto"* Rubio (R-Mattel), and who the real audience is for his ignorant economic proposals, starting with tax "reform":
What you may not know is that Mr. Rubio’s tax cuts would be almost twice as big as George W. Bush’s as a percentage of gross domestic product — despite the fact that federal debt is much higher than it was 15 years ago, and Republicans have spent the Obama years warning incessantly that budget deficits will destroy America, any day now.
But not to worry: Mr. Rubio insists that his tax cuts would pay for themselves, by unleashing incredible economic growth. Never mind the complete absence of any evidence for this claim — in fact, the last two Democratic presidents, both of whom raised taxes on the rich, both presided over better private-sector job growth than Mr. Bush did (and that’s even if you leave out the catastrophe of Mr. Bush’s last year in office).  [snip]
In short, Mr. Rubio is peddling crank economics. What’s interesting, however, is why. You see, he’s not pandering to ignorant voters; he’s pandering to an ignorant elite.  [snip]

So when Mr. Rubio genuflects at the altars of supply-side economics and hard money, he isn’t telling ordinary Republicans what they want to hear — by and large the party’s base couldn’t care less. He is, instead, pandering to the party’s elite, consisting mainly of big donors and the network of apparatchiks at think tanks, media organizations, and so on.
In the G.O.P., crank doctrines in economics and elsewhere aren’t bubbling up from below, they’re being imposed from the top down(our emphasis)
Please read Krugman's entire piece at the link.

One of the challenges in dealing with the gusano, as we and others have noted, is that he's the favorite pony of the Republican "establishment" (the "elite" noted above) and their cheerleading Beltway corporate media.  That's why every day you see descriptions like this (in the "liberal" once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle) that conflate a descriptor like "mainstream" to the very radical Roboto:
Rubio is hoping to run up his score with suburban and upwardly mobile, mainstream voters in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis and Nashville.  (our emphasis)
They're really, really dying to run with their narrative "21st Century Marco vs. old news Hillary/ Bernie," aren't they?!  Meanwhile, let's see if he ever wins a primary, shall we?
_________________
*  Until something better comes along, we're changing Rubio's nickname from "Glug Glug" to "Roboto," even though we acknowledge his on- going need for hydration!