Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in Donald Trump. I mean, it’s hard to fault a guy for modesty, but this is politics. You’ve gotta be in it to win it, go for the gold, etc. When someone endorses your vision of human flourishing, you can’t go all shrinking violet on the American people. So I really wish the current frontrunner would rear that bashful head of his and remind the world—and his fellow Republican presidential candidates—of the plaudits he’s just received from a Top Global Thinker in an expensive newspaper.
In his column on Monday, under the unambiguous headline "Trump Is Right on Economics," Paul Krugman took the rest of the GOP presidential field to task for their criticism of the Donald:
Mr. Bush has chosen to attack Mr. Trump as a false conservative, a proposition that is supposedly demonstrated by his deviations from current Republican economic orthodoxy: his willingness to raise taxes on the rich, his positive words about universal health care. And that tells you a lot about the dire state of the G.O.P. For the issues the Bush campaign is using to attack its unexpected nemesis are precisely the issues on which Mr. Trump happens to be right, and the Republican establishment has been proved utterly wrong.
Puh-leez. How many Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed Jeb Bush’s economic plan? Zero. I mean, Princeton isn’t exactly the Wharton School of Business, but it’s still hard to imagine what Jeb Bush’s comeback might be to, say:
Mr. Bush, in particular, may pose as a reasonable, thoughtful type — credulous reporters even describe him as a policy wonk — but his actual economic platform, which relies on the magic of tax cuts to deliver a doubling of America’s growth rate, is pure supply-side voodoo.
Not really "reasonable" or "thoughtful," the kind of guy only the "credulous" would consider wonkish—really a kind of sinister magician. Compare that with Krugman’s take on the Donald:
But Mr. Trump, who is self-financing, didn’t need to genuflect to the big money, and it turns out that the base doesn’t mind his heresies. This is a real revelation, which may have a lasting impact on our politics.
Anyway, I hope this comes up during the debate next week.