I grabbed a bit of a Paul Krugman article titled "Centrism is for Suckers," which grabbed me because, well, I'm a centrist. I've always felt that extremists, with their need for infalliability and their permanent outrage, are my natural enemy. Now somebody's saying that the moderate way is the sucker's way? Here's what I was able to grab:

The point is that those who cling to the belief that politics can be conducted in terms of people rather than parties — a group that also includes would-be centrist Democrats like Joe Lieberman and many members of the punditocracy — are kidding themselves.

The fact is that in 1994, the year when radical Republicans took control both of Congress and of their own party, things fell apart, and the center did not hold. Now we’re living in an age of one-letter politics, in which a politician’s partisan affiliation is almost always far more important than his or her personal beliefs. And those who refuse to recognize this reality end up being useful idiots for those, like President Bush, who have been consistently ruthless in their partisanship.

Here's the link to the blocked-out article. If anybody has access to the NYTimes web site (like I did back when it was my hometown newspaper), could you please pull the rest of the article and either post it here or IM it to me? I'd kind of like to read the piece, even though I suspect I will disagree strongll with it.

Thanks in advance -- this Lemur will owe ya one.