Jon Chait has a post about a conservative misinformation campaign involving a truncated quote from Barney Frank — something to which I can relate. In this case, the estimateestimable Mr. Frank was saying that we need to expand regulation of runaway financial institutions, and this was clipped to make it seem as if he was calling for bigger government across the board.
One thing Chait doesn’t mention, though, is that the willingness of right-wingers to believe this particular myth has a lot to do with projection. On the right, people are for smaller government as a matter of principle — smaller government for its own sake. And so they naturally imagine that their opponents must be their mirror image, wanting bigger government as a goal in itself.
But it’s not true. I don’t know any progressives who gloat over increases in the federal payroll or the government share of GDP. Progressives have things they want the government to do — like guaranteeing health care. Size per se doesn’t matter. But people on the right apparently can’t get that.
