Donald Trump Found A Good Home In The Post Truth Republican Party

Many conservative Republicans have been critical of Donald Trump's disregard for the truth.  They take the position that Trump is an anomaly.  They point to conservative intellectuals in conservative think tanks who have good ideas on policies like healthcare.  They will reform the Republican Party and return it to what it was before Trump.  Paul Krugman makes a different argument.  He doesn't mention the fact that Obamacare, which Republicans want to repeal, was derived from ideas generated by a conservative think tank.  It was successfully implemented by the Republican governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.  It only became a bad idea under President Obama.  Nonetheless, Krugman had no problems debunking the idea that reformists in conservative think tanks will restore the Republican Party to its former glory.  He simply pointed out all the lies that they are making about Obamacare and their proposed replacement bill.  Of course, he understands the idea of false equivalency, which requires us to point out that our political parties are equally bad, but he rejects that idea. After reviewing all of the lies coming from Republican leaders he concludes that the Republican Party has become the Post-Truth political party.  Donald Trump has surrounded himself with Republicans who share his disregard for the truth.  They were not hard to find.  The House majority leader Paul Ryan is perfectly happy with the terrible bill passed by the Republican House.  It cuts taxes for the wealthy, and it pays for the tax cuts by making huge cuts in Medicaid.  Ryan defends the loss of healthcare coverage in the new bill by arguing that it was voluntary.  Those who could not afford to pay for the higher premiums behaved like good consumers.  They chose not to purchase the insurance.  The Republican Party has also either denied global warming or it has argued that it is unrelated to human consumption of fossil fuels.  In other words, they reject the findings of the scientific community.  Donald Trump's rejection of scientific evidence is perfectly consistent with Republican orthodoxy.