Paul Krugman's "Messing With Medicare": Hell Hath No Fury Like a Krugman Scorned

Reading through Paul Krugman's latest New York Times op-ed, "Messing With Medicare" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/25krugman.html?ref=opinion), one is initially led to believe that we are contemplating "same old, same old": yet another variation on Krugman's irate criticism of attempts to rein in federal spending at a time when the economy is tanking.

And then, three paragraphs from the bottom, comes the surprise:

"So why is the president embracing these bad policy ideas? In a forthcoming article in The New York Review of Books, the veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew suggests that members of the White House political team saw the 2010 election as a referendum on government spending and that they believe that cutting spending is the way to win next year."

Furious with Obama, Krugman is letting us know that the president's nascent desire to cut spending is no more than an unscrupulous political ploy designed to win him reelection.

Actually, this should come as less than a bolt from the blue. With almost no achievements under his belt heading toward 2012, Obama is doing what he does best, i.e. positioning and campaigning.

Although Krugman appears to think that he is smarter than the rest of us, how is it that this Nobel Prize winner didn't see this coming?

To quote and garble a misquote: "Hell hath no fury like a Krugman scorned."