1. To put the nicest construction on Krugman's statement that he wants to preserve the America "we grew up in," he wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine of October 20 of last year called "For Richer" where he praised what he called "the great compression," meaning the relative income equality of the period from the end of WW2 until the 70s. He notes that this was an unusual time, and that prior to this, income inequity in America was much greater, and that the pendulum is swinging quickly back in that direction. So the America "we grew up in" could simply be a coded reference to "an America with much greater income equality."
Taking one's vision of the future and projecting it onto an ideal past seems to be an ever popular trope (I hope I'm using that word correctly.) Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's what I figure he was doing.
2. According to David Brock's _Blinded by the Right_, Grover Norquist takes Gramsci and Lenin very seriously. The point isn't to scream that the right uses Gramsci and Lenin or for the left (such as it is) to re-claim these figures as our own, but to realize that in these writings a prominent Repug strategist has found something THAT WORKS. OK then--what works against these techniques? Maybe only the same techniques, applied more ferociously. If so, then have at it.
And if Gramsci and Lenin actually took their ideas from 19th century US political operatives--well then, look at them, too. Maybe Norquist reads Gramsci and Lenin not because of any European depth, but because they "added value" to the manoeuverings of the the politicals *they* studied.
Curtiss