Another Extreme Example

Ezra Klein linked to a post where Tyler Cowen posts the following comment from another site:

It’s incredibly frustrating. The political and policy world falls into two camps:

Those who believe no stimulus is necessary, everything is supply-side. Those who believe stimulus is necessary but only fiscal stimulus can or should supply it.

It’s like people completely forgot the existence of Milton Friedman, and decided to revert to the stupidest possible version of New Keynesianism, where interest rates are the only lever of monetary policy and the printing press is something that only functions when rates are above zero.

I feel like to both the centre left and the right, Milton Friedman is too heretical now — too right-wing for the left obviously and too left-wing for the right. Consequently, everything about monetarism has been stripped out of the public consciousness and we are left with vulgar Keynesianism and vulgar Austrianism.

We truly live in a Dark Age of economics.

This is silliness. Actually what is happening is that the Republican v. Democrat debate was over whether to use monetary or fiscal policy (respectively). Now the debate is whether to do anything. Milton Friedman is too liberal for the Republicans, which shows how far right they have gone. While Democrats are openly calling for more monetary policy.

Let that sink in. Republicans are opposing Milton Friedman policies. 

Too many people are trying to say the two sides are equally to blame. But this example makes it perfectly clear, contrary to the commenter, that the Republicans have gone off the reservation and won't even agree to Democrat suggestions that line up with old Republican positions - positions that used to be far to the right at the time.