Responding to the conventional wisdom that Republican lawmakers defend President Donald Trump because they are afraid of his wrath — mainly expressed via Twitter attacks — Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman claimed it goes beyond cowardice and into something much deeper — the fear of losing power over Democrats.

In a series of tweets on Thursday morning that highlighted reporting in USA Today that Republicans in Kentucky are searching for ways to overturn the voting on Tuesday and hand the governorship back to ousted Matt Bevin, the NYT columnist said the GOP no longer cares about what is right or legal.

“Seeing a lot of pieces about why GOP politicians are standing behind Trump even though they know he grotesquely abused power and betrayed US interests. Usually framed in terms of primary challenges, etc. But is this overthinking?” the columnist suggested.

Krugman then proposed an alternative theory, positing that there is nothing Republican lawmakers won’t defend because “the modern GOP just doesn’t consider it legitimate for Dems to hold power.”

“There’s a lot of evidence from state-level races that the modern GOP just doesn’t consider it legitimate for Dems to hold power, no matter what,” he wrote. “By this standard, doing whatever it takes to keep Ds out, even if it involves colluding with foreign powers.”

He then added, “And/or massively abusing the power of office is perfectly OK. In other words, no reason to believe that most Rs are really troubled by revelations about Trump’s actions. Dems are the enemy, and rule of law is just something they pretend to care about.”

You can see the tweets below: