The Lady Wasn’t For Turning (Thank God).

Tyler Cowen takes a look at Paul Krugman’s book and says Krugman isn’t prepared to think broadly on the question of why conservatism triumphed in the 1980s:

Conservatism rose in the 1980s in large part because the mid to late 1970s were such an economic mess and because American had lost so much relative status internationally.  Krugman won’t face up to that; instead he blames the Republican manipulation of “the race card,” even though at the time racial tensions arguably were lower than ever before.  Of course in a relatively close election any single factor can be called decisive but I found this discussion well below the standards of the political science literature, even the popular political science literature. Krugman calls for single-payer health insurance, tax hikes, and raising the minimum wage.  He doesn’t come off as all that radical. His theory of government failure is that wealthy right-wingers hijack the state to redistribute wealth to themselves, and that’s all we hear on what’s wrong with government.