Recent Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman:
"Last night wasn’t just a victory for
tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was
also, I hope, the end of the monster years.
What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s
political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters
like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened
because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like
Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and
understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11
as an opportunity to start torturing people.
And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were
reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in
fact, monsters, was “shrill.”
Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American
politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been
banished to the wilderness."