The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman

An eye opening book about the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, the New Deal, and movement conservatism. I had heard many of the ideas in this book from disparate sources before. Krugman references the Frank book: What's the matter with Kansas, and confirms the belief stated in that book that conservative scaremongering about 'values' issues such as abortion and gay rights was used to win the election, but the result of lower taxes on the rich was effectively hidden by the distraction of going to war. In Conscience, I also hear echoes of the Carville/Beluga book Take It Back, about the impressive and scary movement conservatism machine which has taken over the Republican party.

But as an economist, Krugman brings it all together well (and really it's about money and cheapness), by bringing in history to demonstrate how the Republican party has essentially been put back together starting with Reagan really, after years of defeats, by the rich businessmen fighting against unions and the party has essentially been bought by m/billionaires who have created a money driven political machine which rewards loyal Republican politicians with patronage jobs in conservative 'think tanks' even after they've been voted out. The single minded goal seems to be to take apart FDR's New Deal and lower taxes on the rich (and their estates). And holy bejezzus, how scary is William Kristol.

Krugman does mention that the overreach of the Republican parties strategy to call on Southern white racist leanings is resulting in significant backlash. It may yet mobilize blacks and Latinos to vote solidly Democratic for years to come. And hopefully they will in fact go out and vote, something which was discouraged by Republican secretary of states.

Krugman holds out hope for future Democratic party victories and for universal health care which would move forward a big piece of the progressive agenda left unfinished since the New Deal. In this pre-2008 book, he does mention a key piece of any plan is mandated coverage which eliminates administrative jobs spent determining whether a person is worthy of coverage -- will not cost the insurer more money than premiums. This inefficiency and the lack of long term health vision or focus on prevention is why the US program is so costly. People end up changing insurers often enough and then going on medicare that insurance companies see it as monetarily favorable to avoid even low cost prevention options. Later patients end up costing the system more in life-saving measures as well as having a lower quality of life.