After Zombie Marx, we have Bastard Keynes.

Today Ezra Klein has a column that tries to make conservatives learn to stop worrying and love the old Bloomsbury homosexual:

When you hear “Keynesian” today, it’s usually with “Obamacare” and “socialists.” It’s Republican shorthand not only for the economic theory that governed the Obama administration’s response to the crisis, but also for the general Democratic outlook. And it’s not a compliment.

“The president’s team were fervent believers in the theories of a British economist called John Maynard Keynes,” wrote Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in his election-year manifesto, “Young Guns.” He’s right about that. Lawrence Summers, the former director of the National Economic Council, and Christina Romer, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, were two of the most influential Keynesian economists in the country. Obama didn’t just have a team of Keynesians. He had the Keynesian all-star team.

Perhaps the president’s team should have better explained their theories to Cantor. In his book, Cantor goes on to describe Keynesianism as the theory “that government can be counted on to spend more wisely than the people.” He’s wrong — and wrong in a way that’s making it harder to recover from this crisis, and could make it harder to respond to the next one.