Larry Kudlow wanted Bush to invade Iraq because the "shock value" would "elevate the stock market"

[Miles Archer]

Kudlow is not, as he and some of his fiercest critics insist, a “supply-side” economist who believes tax cuts cure all ills. For Kudlow, tax cuts are merely instrumental. They are “the key to prosperity and freedom,” as he subtitled one of his books, because they are a simple, sure-fire way to elevate stock values.

Kudlow believes the stock market to be the ultimate measure of human progress. His economic commentary and analysis typically reduces all of social existence to one simple quantitative metric, enabling him to ignore or even celebrate every other accompanying evil. This is most explicitly stated in his semi-infamous 2002 National Review column urging Bush to invade Iraq. “The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points,” Kudlow declared.

During the Cold War, such straightforward enthusiasm for war profiteering would have been laughed off as Leninist propaganda (Lenin believed imperialism to be the last phase of capitalism before its inevitable collapse). But Kudlow was perfectly sincere. He saw the stock market as a “manifestation of the pained expressions on our faces” and wanted a “small war” to “revive the American spirit.”

Kudlow expressed a similar sentiments about the Bill Clinton presidency. When Clinton raised taxes on the highest-earning households in 1993, Kudlow called it a ”wet blanket″ that would impede growth. By the end of the Clinton presidency, however, he was declaring the previous eight years an economic victory … for Ronald Reagan. This was revealed not by looking at economic growth, or unemployment or wage levels, but by a quick glance at the stock market. According to Kudlow, the Clinton-era prosperity had really started much earlier ― the Gipper had ushered in an 18-year bull market on Wall Street. And for once, Kudlow missed an opportunity to score partisan points against Clinton. The Democratic president’s welfare reform doubled severe poverty in America, and the low unemployment of the late 1990s was built on a stock market bubble.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/larry-kudlow-is-the-perfect-embodiment-of-republican-economics_us_5aabcd91e4b0337adf832bf5

[Sanity Claws]

1. Did you mean invade, not evade?

[Miles Archer]

2. Already fixed it.

[dhol82]

3. Great, we have another idiot who will call for another small war.

I just hope we can make it to November.

[C_U_L8R]

4. We might all get rich

...betting against Kudlow. This idiot is consistent.
Consistently wrong.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. So remember his bragging about

that on CNBC.