Logic doesn't live here anymore

I'm frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life. ~Spock: The Galileo Seven

Krugman continues on his nearly futile mission to inject some reality into our political discourse. I doubt he will ever be able to crack through the cognitive dissonance that forms the bedrock of the GOP base, but you have to give him a lot of credit for trying. He takes on the upcoming health care repeal madness today and it's worth reading in full but I do have a bit of a quibble with this point:

We are, I believe, witnessing something new in American politics. Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.

I'm not sure it's all that new. What has defined the GOP agenda more than outrageously false bombast delivered to the base with self righteous certainty? It has served them very well since they were thrown out of power. Logic would ruin the narrative. But this is an important point that is often overlooked.

And it’s not about the money. As I tried to explain in my last column, the modern G.O.P. has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs.

Given that their minds were made up from the beginning, top Republicans weren’t interested in and didn’t need any real policy analysis — in fact, they’re basically contemptuous of such analysis, something that shines through in their health care report. All they ever needed or wanted were some numbers and charts to wave at the press, fooling some people into believing that we’re having some kind of rational discussion. We aren’t.

Sadly, as the DFHs at Eschaton might say, using rational discussion and the GOP in the same sentence assumes facts not in evidence Dr. Krugman.