Last week, noting that the Republican Party abandoned its previous support for bailouts and fiscal stimulus precisely when they lost power, I argued that Republicans probably weren’t engaged in conscious economic sabotage. Rather, they simply allowed themselves to change their mind in a way that dovetailed with their political self-interest:
People are extraordinarily deft at making their principles — not just their stated principles, but their actual principles — comport with their interests. The old Upton Sinclair quote — "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it" — has a lot of wisdom to it.
