Paul Krugman says Trump exposes GOP dirty secret: The Republican Party 'has been faking it for years'

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asserted on Monday that Donald Trump's presidency has shown that the Republican Party is completely unprepared and unable to enact the policies it has promised voters for years.

In his Monday column, Krugman notes that the Republican Party's failure to pass legislation like the repeal and replacement of President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law has little to do with the temper tantrums and antics of President Donald Trump.

"But the broader Republican quagmire — the party’s failure so far to make significant progress toward any of its policy promises — isn’t just about Mr. Trump’s inadequacies," Krugman writes. "The whole party, it turns out, has been faking it for years. Its leaders’ rhetoric was empty; they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they’ve never bothered to understand how anything important works."

According to the Times columnist, Republicans who promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and reform the tax code "seem utterly shocked to find themselves facing reality."

At this point, then, major Republican initiatives are bogged down for reasons that have nothing to do with the personality flaws of the tweeter in chief, and everything to do with the broader, more fundamental fecklessness of his party.

Faced with the difficulties of making substantive reforms, Krugman predicts that Republicans may "just throw a few trillion dollars at rich people instead."

"But whatever the eventual outcome, what we’re witnessing is what happens when a party that gave up hard thinking in favor of empty sloganeering ends up in charge of actual policy," he concludes. "And it’s not a pretty sight."

Read Paul Krugman's entire column here.