That Old-Time Whistle

Paul Krugman calls out Paul Ryan for That Old-Time Whistle.

"So it’s comical, in a way, to see Mr. Ryan trying to explain away some recent remarks in which he attributed persistent poverty to a ‘culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working.’ He was, he says, simply being ‘inarticulate.’ How could anyone suggest that it was a racial dog-whistle? Why, he even cited the work of serious scholars — people like Charles Murray, most famous for arguing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. Oh, wait.

Just to be clear, there’s no evidence that Mr. Ryan is personally a racist, and his dog-whistle may not even have been deliberate. But it doesn’t matter. He said what he said because that’s the kind of thing conservatives say to each other all the time. And why do they say such things? Because American conservatism is still, after all these years, largely driven by claims that liberals are taking away your hard-earned money and giving it to Those People."

I think Krugman is mostly correct, though I do think many tea partiers are very angry with Wall Street, but their elected politicians don't share this sentiment.