Over at TPM Cafe, Paul Krugman comments on Johnathan Chait’s The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by CrackpotEconomics:
Jon’s description is correct, but, I think, somewhat incomplete.
First, supply-side quackery is only one of the gambits used to sell tax cuts.
There are other, older versions – notably the claim that government is wasting your money on vast armies of useless bureaucrats. Way back in 1964, in his famous speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Reagan talked about how crazy it was that the federal government employed 2.5 million civilian workers; nobody pointed out that two-thirds of those civilians worked either for the Pentagon or for the post office.
Second, Jon talks at some length about the media, and in particular about the Republican ability to get journalists to harp endlessly on supposed character flaws of Democrats, while their own candidates get a free pass…