Krugman: "The Typical Plumber Would Pay Lower, Not Higher, Taxes Under An Obama Administration"

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America's divisions -- divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions -- he was able to reinvent the Republican brand. The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the "silent majority," the regular guys -- white guys, it went without saying -- who didn't like the social changes taking place.

It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn't require any change in the product's actual contents -- in fact, the G.O.P. was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.

John McCain's strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.

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