Paul Krugman: And now they notice?

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal reports that many business people are disillusioned with the Republican party. A graphic titled “Endangered Elephant” shows that the public now believes that Republicans are less fiscally responsible than Democrats. The new Washington Post poll says the same thing. All this seems to come as shocking news to the Journal.

But fiscal irresponsibility has been not just a characteristic, but a principle, of movement conservatism since the 1970s. Here’s Irving Kristol, explaining why neoconservatives turned to supply-side economics in the 1970s (from his essay in The Public Interest, fall 1995):