Paul Krugman on GDS

By Aziz P. -
Paul Krugman looks a little more closely at Gore Derangement Syndrome:

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right.


Krugman also notes that what really drives the conservatives crazy about Gore is that the smear campaign has failed. They succeeded in keeping Gore out of office in 2000, but the ensuing presidency of George W. Bush was rather pyrrhic for conservatism as a cause, as the tepid GOP crop for 2008 proves (with exception of Giuliani, who risks alienating the social core).

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