Paul Krugman: Conservatives Are 'Obsessed -- More Than Anything Else -- With Power'

For conservatives, policy takes a backseat to winning, Paul Krugman writes in a post/rant published on his New York Times blog Wednesday evening.

“What we’ve just seen is a peek into the modern right-wing psyche, which is obsessed -- more than anything else -- with power,” the Nobel-Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist says.

Krugman recounts how most conservatives rejected the evidence coming in from pollsters and Nate Silver in the run-up to the election, offering that up as evidence of how much the right-wing needs to keep up appearances of crushing the opposition.

The need to stay on top is so delusional that even election results couldn't tamp it down. Krugman writes: "And while conservatives of that ilk would probably concede if pressed on it that there’s a difference between the perception of being on top and the reality determined in an election, emotionally they can’t separate the two."

Krugman's prime example: Karl Rove. The former George W. Bush strategist refused to acknowledge that Obama won the state of Ohio Tuesday night, prompting an off-the-rails moment for Fox News.

(We're assuming we don’t even need to remind you of Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade to the same effect.)

Instead of a country dictated by “non-urban white people,” Krugman says that Obama's victory reflects American diversity, or what Krugman calls “the real America.”

“[T]he real America trumped the 'real America,'” Krugman wrote in a separate blog post shortly following Obama's win. “The 2008 Obama coalition wasn’t a fluke; it was the country we are becoming."