Last year, nutjob wacko "columnist"/"cartoonist" Ted Rall wrote that it was likely that dictator-for-life George W. Bush would cancel this year's general election.

Considering the fact that the United States even managed to have a presidential election at the height of the Civil War, Rall's lame charge was tantamount to saying that President Bush would commit treason.

Well, it took a few months, but New York Times columnist Paul Krugman revealed that he believes the same thing. Tim Blair highlighted Krugman's comments on Australia's "Lateline" program.

On Australia’s Lateline program, Paul Krugman speaks his mind:

There was actually a kind of revealing moment recently - Bush gave an interview, was more or less dragooned into an interview on Meet The Press and the interviewer said: "Well, what if you lose the election?" And he said: "I'm not going to lose the election."

And the interviewer said: "But what if you do lose?" He said: "I'm not going lose the election." The possibility that they just would not regard it as a legitimate thing if someone else were to take power.

Krugman looked almost as paranoid as he sounded. Here’s the actual exchange between George W. Bush and Meet the Press host Tim Russert:

Russert: Are you prepared to lose?

President Bush: No, I'm not going to lose.

Russert: If you did, what would you do?

President Bush: Well, I don't plan on losing. I’ve got a vision for what I want to do for the country. See, I know exactly where I want to lead. I want to lead us — I want to lead this world toward more peace and freedom. I want to lead this great country to work with others to change the world in positive ways, particularly as we fight the war on terror, and we got changing times here in America, too.

What did Krugman expect Bush to say? “I am fully prepared to lose, and if I do, I expect I’ll be sent into exile on the island of Elba”?

My suggestion is for the Times to allow Krugman to write a column expounding on this theory so that he may be mocked all across America.