Paul Krugman gets it, even on topics outside his area of expertise. But that’s not too surprising, because the tactics employed by denialists and apologists really don’t change much:
Think about climate change. You have various right-wingers simultaneously (a) denying that global warming is happening (b) denying that anyone denies that global warming is happening, but denying that humans are responsible (c) denying that anyone denies that humans are causing global warming, insisting that the real argument is about the appropriate response.
What has changed is how effective wingnuts have become at flooding the zone with this crap and how amazingly fast their memories fail when ideologically convenient. They can cook up the most ridiculous narrative and inject it into the national dialogue as a legitimate idea like nobody’s business. But they’re able to do that in part because they don’t have to play by the same rules they impose on everyone else.
It’s a given in their insular culture that the liar du jure rarely need worry about his or her past statements, no matter how recent or well documented, even if they crash head-on with the latest spiel. In fact, if the goal is to confuse and obfuscate, that’s a feature, not a bug.
They’ve trained an army of killbots to follow every word that comes out of the Limbaughs style gasbags on Fox or hate radio, no matter how much it contradicts what went before. Go back to 2000 and watch how… after 8 years chasing Bill Clinton’s dick around and hounding us on the evils of government overreach, with felons like G.Gordon Liddey wailing about jack-booted thugs and Rush treating the first lady like Tokyo Rose, then suddenly their guy gets appointed to the Oval Office and they do a 180. Under Bush it’s practically traitorous to criticize the president.
And 8 years later a Democrat has the temerity to put his hand on the bible and suddenly its a 180 again…open season on the federal government and nobody has any remembrance of Shrub Bush.
It’s like the Etch and Sketch party.
Karl Rove’s core strategy: attack the opponent’s strongest point.
Generalized wingnut strategy: don’t just deny facts, attack the whole concept of consistent, verifiable reality.