Tea party genius: Sen. Larry Kudlow

The CNBC talk show host has been spectacularly wrong on the economy for years. He obviously belongs in Congress

Andrew Leonard
Slate.com
Feb. 09, 2010

Could we really be so lucky? CQ Politics is reporting that "the movement to draft CNBC host Larry Kudlow to run against Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is charging full-speed ahead." A nation of econobloggers and political reporters holds its breath (and poison pen) in feverish anticipation.

It's not just that the prospect of an inveterate anti-tax, pro-supply-side ideologue with high name recognition running for the Senate in the media capital of the world would be the equivalent of a massive jobs stimulus plan targeted directly at the beleaguered news business. There's also the fun to be had detailing how one man could so consistently be so wrong when discussing his supposed specialty: the economy.

Of course, many, many people have been proven wrong over the last few years when asked to forecast the direction the economy is headed. Treasury secretaries, Federal Reserve chairmen, the CEOs of Wall Street's biggest financial institutions ... Pretty much everyone got something wrong at some point. But I defy you to find someone more spectacularly wrong, from the outset of the financial crisis right up to last month, than Larry Kudlow.

Our story begins in the summer of 2005, when Kudlow offered his thoughts in National Review on the sustainability of the housing boom in "The Housing Bears Are Wrong Again." The opening paragraph will live in infamy:

(More here.)