Silly Krugman, Don't You Know Anything

So they're having a debate about Jon Chait's new book about Republican pseudo-economics. Paul Krugman and Ross Douthat are among the participants. Douthat, on his own blog for some reason, challenges Krugman's argument that race has played a huge role in GOP success. Douthat says:

Really? That's it - that's the whole story? The Cold War, the crime wave, the sexual revolution and Roe v. Wade, the tax revolts, and about sixty other smaller things that I can think of were all trumped by the race issue? What an utterly ridiculous interesting idea.

It seems to me that this is almost willfully obtuse. What if, for instance, Krugman had argued that the Union's victory in the Civil War was largely explained by its advantages in industry, population, and transportation? Douthat could have responded, "Really? That's it - that's the whole story? Bull Run, the death of Stonewall Jackson, Vicksburg, Gettysburg - these were all trumped by GDP? What an utterly ridiculous interesting idea."

The point, of course, is that there are always plenty of but-for causes for any given outcome. We don't attach the same level of importance to all these causes because some are more fundamental than others. An analogy from the law is that it's not considered causation for the purposes of negligence (or refuting negligence) to drive too fast, if the only result is that you are under a collapsing bridge earlier than you would otherwise have been. Sure, if you had been driving slower the bridge wouldn't have fallen on you, but the fast driving wasn't a meaningful cause of the injury.

Anyway, Krugman doesn't need my help, but it certainly causes Douthat to fall a bit in my estimation.