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Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist and Author of "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century"
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

BUZZFLASH: Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a board member of the National Rifle Association and GOP advisor, made a comment that he wants to shrink the size of the federal government so small that he could drown it in a bathtub. When you look at the Bush economic policy, are we dealing with an ideology to destroy social programs and the federal government? Or is it mismanagement? Or both?

KRUGMAN: I think you have to think of this as there's more than one player in this thing. If you ask Norquist or the Heritage Foundation about where the economic and social policy intelligentsia really stands, their aim is to roll us back to Herbert Hoover or before. Norquist actually thinks that we've got to get back to before the progressive movement –- before the McKinley era, which actually is one of Karl Rove's guiding lights as well. So there's definitely an important faction in the Bush administration and in the Republican Party that really wants to unravel all of this stuff and basically wants us to go back to a situation where, if you are unlucky, and you don't have enough to eat, or you can't afford medical care, well, that's just showing that you weren't sufficiently provident. And then, for these people, there would be no social safety net whatsoever.

Other people in the party, and other people in the coalition, have deluded themselves into thinking that somehow this is all going to be painless, and we're going to grow our way out of the deficit. Other people really don't care about any of that and are viewing their alliance with these people as a way to achieve their social goals -– basically roll back the revolution in social mores over the past few decades.

So there is a coalition, but there's no question that if you ask what do the core ideologues want, the answer is they want to roll it all back. If you looked at what the Heritage Foundation says, they use the terms "New Deal" and "Great Society" as essentially curse words. Everything Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson did to provide a little bit of a cushion for Americans having bad luck is a bad thing, from their point of view.
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