Quote of the Day: “The Republican Party Left Me”

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From former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, in his new memoir, The Courage To Act:

[I] lost patience with Republicans’ susceptibility to the know-nothing-ism of the far right. I didn’t leave the Republican Party. I felt that the party left me.

This is, of course, a deliberate echo of Ronald Reagan’s famous line about the Democratic Party leaving him. And it’s hard to blame Bernanke. The know-nothing wing of the Republican Party rebelled against the TARP rescue package at the height of the economic meltdown. They howled that low interest rates would lead to imminent hyperinflation. They resolutely refused to consider fiscal stimulus despite Bernanke’s repeated pleas (see helpful illustration below from 2011). They wanted to audit the Fed. They wanted to end the Fed. They wanted to put us back on the gold standard. When Bernanke told them that spending cuts would lead to higher unemployment, Rep. Kevin McCarthy refused to believe him. Now he’s about to become Speaker of the House.

Bernanke was no leftist, he was just a mainstream economist—and a cautious one. It didn’t matter. Republicans didn’t want to hear anything that interfered with their hard-money frenzy, even from one of their own. So they abandoned him.