Paul Krugman Reveals the 'Real Sinners' Behind Trump
Paul Krugman is incredulous about the mounting horrors of the Trump campaign and spends his Monday column once again trying to inject some reasonable thinking into the debate about how to vote come November. Depressingly, he notes that a YouGov survey just found that "61 percent of Republicans support his call for Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton," which doesn't bode well for how Republicans feel about his criticisms of a Muslim war hero's family.
But ever fair-minded, Krugman notes that there is, after all, a significant minority within the Republican party that is not racist, who think international commitments are important and who are just, well, normal people. "Yet the great majority of these not-crazy Republicans are still supporting Mr. Trump for president. And we have a right to ask why," he writes.
True, a Clinton victory would mean a continuation of the center-left governance we’ve had under Barack Obama, which would be a big disappointment for those who want a turn to the right. And many people have convinced themselves that ideology aside, Mrs. Clinton would be a bad president. Obviously I disagree on the ideology, and while we won’t know about a Clinton presidency until or unless it happens, I find much to admire in the real Hillary, who is nothing like the caricature. But never mind: even if you’re a conservative who really dislikes the Democratic candidate, how can you justify choosing Donald Trump?
How, Krugman wonders, have people convinced themselves that Clinton would be a disaster as President, when no clear-eyed analysis comes close to demonstrating that? He continues:
Start with the least important issue (even if it is my specialty), economics. If you’re a Republican, you presumably believe that center-left policies — higher taxes on top incomes, a big subsidized expansion of health insurance, tighter financial regulation — are bad for the economy. But even if you think the Obama economy should have been better, the fact is that we’ve added 11 million private-sector jobs; stocks are way up; inflation and interest rates have stayed low; the budget deficit has withered away.
Similarly, it is very hard to argue that Clinton would be a disaster on matters of national security, especially compared to a man who cozies up to dictators, "talks about abandoning NATO allies if they don’t pay up and seems fine with Russian adventurism in Ukraine."
 There are times, Krugman points out, when party loyalty should and must take a back seat.
This is one of them.
