Daily Howler:

Yesterday, a C-SPAN caller from Scottsdale, Arizona posed this question to Rudy Giuliani. On Olympus, the gods rocked with laughter as this call occurred:

C-SPAN CALLER (1/6/08): First of all, regarding tax cuts, you'e 100 percent right. McCain doesn't understand economics - revenues and expenditures. If you're spending too much, that's an expenditure problem. If you're cutting taxes, you're increasing revenues. He somehow thinks that tax cuts are making the deficit worse. And it makes no sense. He doesn't understands it.

No, we didn't make that up. The question starts at roughly 9:20 of the tape, "Rudy Giuliani on the C-SPAN Campaign Bus." Just click here, then fast forward.

We've discussed this matter many times in the past. The caller sounds completely sincere. But he has been told, for decades now, that cutting tax rates increases revenue. The people who have told him this know that it's lunacy, but they're playing him for a rube - and the liberal world, and the mainstream press, have never really gotten around to telling such voters that they're being played for fools by a right-wing conspiracy. The caller believes what he has been told - in part, because no one contradicts it. Big newspapers lead more comfortable lives when they let such cant go unchallenged. And, of course, their owners and their journalistic stars gain from Republican tax cuts.