Paul Krugman appeared on MSNBC to discuss his latest op-ed Republican Death Trip. Paul reiterates some of the points he made in his article.

Krugman: The way I look at it, these people are unappeaseable. It's not really about what it's ostensibly about. It's not actually about the end of life provisions. It's not about the specifics in the bill. They're just going to grab onto anything and try to turn some it into something awful. So they saw this. It seemed to have something to do with end of life and so they said, you know, death panels. It's not about the substance, and that you can't actually satisfy the crazies by offering substantive concessions. What they hate is the whole idea of any kind of health reform and more broadly what they hate is the whole idea of Democrats actually, you know, holding the White House.

Harwood: Interesting point Paul and I've got to tell you one White House official told me today, our problem right now is if we tell some of the Republican opponents in the Senate you can have everything you want in the bill, they still won't vote for it. So...

Krugman: That's right.

So why are they still reaching out to them? From the article:

The question now is how Mr. Obama will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream.

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

What, then, should Mr. Obama do? It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition? Only time will tell.