In his latest column for the New York Times, best-selling author and award-winning economist claims that the right's recent, unfortunate embrace of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada renegade rancher who has revealed himself to be extremely racist, is the consequence of a larger, troubling shift on the right: the "dumbing down" of American conservatism.

After noting how unconscious or unspoken views on race likely influenced conservatives' embrace of the tax-avoiding Bundy — who is a white cowboy, not a resident of the "inner city" — Krugman writes that, fundamentally, the Bundy story is about conservatism becoming, well, kind of dumb. "[T]he Bundy fiasco," Krugman writes, "was a byproduct of the dumbing down that seems ever more central to the way America’s right operates."

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"American conservatism used to have room for fairly sophisticated views about the role of government," Krugman laments. "Its economic patron saint used to be Milton Friedman, who advocated aggressive money-printing, if necessary, to avoid depressions. It used to include environmentalists who took pollution seriously but advocated market-based solutions like cap-and-trade or emissions taxes rather than rigid rules."

But that day, Krugman says, is over: "[T]oday’s conservative leaders were raised on Ayn Rand’s novels and Ronald Reagan’s speeches ... They insist that the rights of private property are absolute, and that government is always the problem, never the solution."

Krugman continues, explaining why he's not particularly optimistic that the right's dalliance with Bundy will motivate it to smarten up any time soon:

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