Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We've gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We've even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we're talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.





To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You're personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people's money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly OK to take people's money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don't quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don't think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anticlimactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.


It's true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there's normally some lag in the relationship, and it's probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.


Still, let's pretend to take this seriously. If employment is down because government aid is inducing people to stay home, reducing the labor force, then the law of supply and demand should apply: Withdrawing all those workers should be causing labor shortages and rising wages, especially among the low-paid workers most likely to receive aid. In reality, of course, wages are stagnant or declining — and that's especially true for the groups that benefit most from food stamps.

So what's going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan's image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it's not all about race.

What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation's two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological mean-spiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC's Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the tea party, called “losers.” If you're an American, and you're down on your luck, these people don't want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don't fully understand it, but it's a terrible thing to behold.

Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times.