Yglesias You Just Aren't as Pretty as Ezra Klein

Matt Yglesias sure is no Ezra Klein. I think Matt considers himself the luckiest guy in the world to have ever kissed a girl. Whereas Ezra is lucky if he can manage some time to himself. What's this got to do with politics and policy? Nothing. I'm just saying.

However, I was astonished to have read Yglesias' blog yesterday where he highlights tough guy Erick "son of Erick" Erickson's post about how great things were economically during the Bush years where Matt totally let Erickson off the hook.  This is so unlike Yglesias.  Usually he's rather good at shooting down right wing lies.  Not this time.  He seems to have been drawn in by their Fantasy World.

Here's what Erickson wrote concerning the wonderful years of Bush:

“More crucially, after the 2001 initial tax cuts, the annual growth rate went from 0.3% in 2001 to 2.5% in 2002. By 2004, GDP growth was the highest in 20 years.”

Here's what Yglesias said in response:

It’s true, Bush took office at the tail of a recession and then the recession ended and the economy was growing. But as my colleague Michael Ettlinger and EPI’s John Irons detailed in their excellent September 2008 paper “Take a Walk on the Supply Side” if you compare the Bush era to the relatively high tax Clinton era it looks quite bad:

What in the world does that have to do with anything, Matthew?  You totally missed Erickson's point and let him get away with just making stuff up.

The simple matter at hand, and the very hand Yglesias should have slapped, was that everything Erickson said about the Bush legacy was a lie. GDP growth was not the highest in 20 years after the Bush cuts, nor because of the Bush tax cuts.

Erickson is just making stuff up.  The GDP levels Erickson mentions are pure fantasy.  But this is how the GOP sleeps at night.  They've convinced themselves, with the help of Fox News and hate radio, that GDP was at record levels, that unemployment was the lowest it's ever been that George Bush created 10 million jobs, that the deficit was only $400 or so billion after Bush left office and that Iraq had something to do with 9/11.  They believe all that to be true.  So why in the world Yglesias would help validate their Fantasy World legacy is puzzling to me, especially since he is usually so good at jumping all over something like this.

*Editor's Note:

H/T to Paul Krugman for the graph on this one.  For more analysis on the lies Erick Erickson is trying to tell with his blog post entitled "The Facts About the Bush Tax Cuts," give this a read.