Fallacypalooza II - The Wrath of Limbaugh

Continuing my analysis of Paul Krugman's effort in the New York Times to portray Tea Partiers as nut jobs…

Mr. Krugman writes "Then there are the claims made at some recent tea-party events that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in America, which follow on earlier claims that he is a secret Muslim" and "denunciations of evolution…have emerged at some of the parties.” This is the fallacy of Hasty Generalization. Any group of 189,000 people is going to include some who advocate ideas far outside the mainstream. No doubt there were speakers at some of the Parties who doubted that the president was born in America. No doubt there were speakers at some of the Parties who doubted that apes and humans were born from common ancestors. However, these views were not typical, and cannot be ascribed to the protestors as a group. I emailed a friend of mine who attended the Virginia Beach event and asked him whether any of the speakers there expressed these views. "Not at all," he replied. "Along with the usual generalities (liberty, responsibility, gov't by the people,etc.), speakers were fairly well focused on the out-of-control spending, the moral hazard created by bailouts, the questionable legality of the Fed's paper mill actions, etc."

Of course, no condemnation of the Right would be complete without a swipe at Rush Limbaugh. "Speaking of Mr. Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials." This is another Hasty Generalization as well as a Faulty Analogy. The Hasty Generalization is the portrayal of hordes of Republican politicians prostrating themselves in front of the Attila the Hun Chair to beg Mr. Limbaugh’s pardon. Mr. Krugman arrived at this picture by extrapolating from the isolated case of Michael Steele (as far as I know). The Faulty Analogy is the comparison to Stalinist show trials. Those trials may be similar to the Michael Steele incident in that someone pledged fealty in the end. But they differ in the rather important respect that Mr. Limbaugh did not obtain this pledge by arresting Mr. Steele in the middle of the night and beating him in an underground cell at Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square (as far as I know).

(An aside: as a matter of practical politics, I am completely mystified by the efforts of Mr. Krugman, along with Congressman Barney Frank and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, to portray Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party. The G.O.P. is paralyzed by an internal debate whether to stick to the conservative principles that served it so well in the past, or adapt to changing times by moving to a more centrist platform. Why are the Democrats in a hurry to settle this debate and end the paralysis? And why would they want it settled in favor of the side that actually stands for something? Obama's minions are usually better tacticians than that.)

More next week…