"Kudlow isn't a specialist in something else who's just freelancing in economic ignorance on the National Review blogs," writes Matt. "This is supposed to be his area of specialization. But he doesn't know anything about it."
I've done a fair amount of television at this point, and argued, in general, with a fair number of conservatives, and I have literally never encountered an interlocutor who seemed as utterly ignorant of his subject as when I went up against Kudlow. The guy may not be a health care specialist, but he professes to be a business economist, and anyone who's read The Wall Street Journal over the past decade should have at least a passing familiarity with the subject, and any economist should be able to quickly understand the various types of market failure bedeviling the system. But so far as I could tell, he knew, literally, nothing. That's not a condition of ideology. Plenty of conservatives can argue health care. This was a condition of truly spectacular ignorance. Spectacular not because he didn't know, but because he thought a few free market aphorisms were a sufficient substitute for actually knowing. And yet he's seen as an expert. It's bizarre.
