What One Paul Said About Another

Paul Krugman nails Paul Ryan.

There are many negative things you can say about Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and the G.O.P.’s de facto intellectual leader. But you have to admit that he’s a very articulate guy, an expert at sounding as if he knows what he’s talking about.

So it’s comical, in a way, to see Mr. Ryan trying to explain away some recent remarks in which he attributed persistent poverty to a “culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working.” He was, he says, simply being “inarticulate.” How could anyone suggest that it was a racial dog-whistle? Why, he even cited the work of serious scholars — people like Charles Murray, most famous for arguing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. Oh, wait.

 Wait indeed. Concerning dog-whistles, remember that Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for the presidency with a speech about states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town famous for the murders of civil rights workers. Do you think the Old South didn't hear that whistle loud and clear?

Paul Ryan might have heard it, too: