GOP Sacrificing Economy To Oust Obama

David Frum recently took note of a recent letter from the GOP to the Fed:

"We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy. Such steps may erode the already weakened U.S. dollar or promote more borrowing by overleveraged consumers."

As Frum points out:

"We are living through the most rapid deleveraging of the American consumer since the 1930s... The markets see deflation and depression, not inflation. Yet ironically this non-existent and much dreaded inflation is exactly the remedy we need to lighten the load of consumer debt."

He later asks:

"As is, we’re looking at a continued economic slump, more unemployment, and more deleveraging via continuing catastrophic consumer default on mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and student aid. And now the GOP leadership is urging that the Federal Reserve make the catastrophe worse? To what end?"

Could it be that Republicans are against such measures? In another article, Frum points out Republicans had exactly the opposite conclusion during early 90s:

"if conservative journalists could write so feelingly about the need to inject credit during the downturn of 1990-1991, how is that they have arrived at exactly the opposite policy conclusions during the much more severe downturn and deleveraging of 2009-2011? The need for monetary ease seems even greater this time than last – and yet the policy recommendation has been utterly reversed. What’s changed?"

As Joe Nocera of the New York Times explains:

"if the great conservative economist [Milton Friedman] were alive today, he would be leading the charge for quantitative easing."(emphasis mine)

There a a few possibilities for the answer to this question. One of the the most probable seems to be that Republicans have undergone a massive chance in ideology. However, when one of the most prominent leaders in the GOP say their number one priority is to make Obama a one-term president, it is hard to conclude this is not a major factor behind any otherwise crazy-sounding position. Nothing can sink an incumbent worse than a recession.