GOP and Obama's jobs plan: Do Republicans oppose the president's economic policies for ideological reasons or political ones? - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

GOP and Obama's jobs plan: Do Republicans oppose the president's economic policies for ideological reasons or political ones? - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine:

"You can group the conservatives who reject the economic consensus into three rough categories: fundamentalists, cynics, and sheep. The fundamentalists are ideological and come in several varieties. The more primitive prefer Hoover to Keynes, or in some cases God to Hoover. Rick Perry, the Texas governor and presidential candidate, believes that the purpose of the economic crisis is to bring us back to "Biblical principles." Asked on the campaign trail how he would create jobs if he were in office, Perry responded: "You won't have stimulus programs under a Perry presidency. You won't spend all the money." This is a pretty good summation of the Tea Party's know-nothing view that all government spending makes all things worse, always.

"That's not to say that everyone who rejects Obama's stimulus spending is a default-welcoming ignoramus. Libertarians or libertarian-leaners don't necessarily think stimulus won't grow the economy; they just worry that it will grow the government at the same time and that it won't ever shrink back. But they don't mind stimulus tax cuts, which reduce the resources available to government. Rep. Paul Ryan, for instance, the government-slashing chairman of the House budget committee, has argued that stimulus spending is an evanescent sugar high that produces no lasting economic benefit.

"The cynics, by contrast, don't offer any economic analysis at all. They simply reject whatever President Obama proposes. In the now immortal words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." McConnell, like Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, happily voted for the stimulus bill George W. Bush proposed in 2008, which cost $152 billion. Back then, they felt some responsibility for the economy. Now it's Obama's problem. Mitt Romney knows enough about finance to understand that shrinking spending would raise unemployment. But he also knows that running against Obama with a 9 percent unemployment rate is a better bet than running against Obama with an 8 percent unemployment rate. "

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