New York Times columnist Paul Krugman this week argued that President Donald Trump's rejection of reality in the wake of his 2020 presidential election loss shouldn't surprise anyone who has followed the Republican Party for the past 30 years.
As Krugman documents, the GOP has for decades been a party that has rejected scientific consensus if it conflicts with the party's economic orthodoxy.
"Republican rejection of reality didn’t start in 2020, or even with the Trump era," he writes. "Climate change denial -- including claims that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by an international cabal of scientists -- has been a badge of partisan identity for many years."
Krugman does acknowledge that Trump has taken Republicans' denial of reality to new heights, although he says it's more of a natural evolution of the party's thinking than anything else.
"The point is that once a party gets into the habit of rejecting facts it doesn’t want to hear, one fact it’s bound to reject sooner or later is the fact that it lost an election," he writes. "In that sense there’s a straight line from, say, the Republican embrace of climate denial to the party’s willingness to go along with Trump’s attempts to retain power."