During the roundtable discussion on This Week, ABC's Sunday political talk show hosted by Christiane Amanpour, Times columnist Paul Krugman ridiculed Tea Party candidates as "irrational" and "seriously strange" before he insisted that their irrationality is demonstrated by their inability to recognize that Barack Obama is a "centrist moderate President."
Krugman asserted: "If we have a Republican Party that actually takes the White House, actually has control of Congress, but contains a large wing of these people, it's going to be incapable of making real choices. These are people who are as irrational as they seem in these ads."
He soon parodied the views of Tea Party enthusiasts:
There are some seriously strange people running, thanks to the Tea Party....It's not just suspicion of government. We have people out there believing that this basically centrist moderate President we have is a socialist bringing Sharia law to America. None of that is rational.