Cynical political theory

While waiting for some test code to run today, I ran across this editorial about the right-ward shift in the Republican party.  The bit that struck me was the note at the end about a paper (which I wasn't able to actually read since it looks to be stuck behind a paywall that I don't seem to have access to) that notes that economic recessions tend to lead to an increased vote for right-wing political parties.

This would be easy to ignore, if it weren't for the fact that conservative economic policy is widely considered by most sane and honest economists as a ploy to divert wealth to the already-wealthy benefactors of the conservative movement.  The past decade has largely shown that these policies do not work to the benefit of regular people, create "jobless recoveries," and basically fuck over the fiscal well-being of the country.

Now, given these two points, it would be possible to create a very cynical reason why these discredited economic policies have stuck around: not only do you enrich your cronies, but you trash the economy enough to prompt the rightward shift in the political climate.  This is certainly a short- to moderate- term solution, as in the long run, you loot too much out of the working class to favor a wealthy elite, which could cause economic collapse.  One would expect this to be a deterrant, but I would offer the recent Goldman-Sachs/Wall Street debacle as an example of people completely ignoring a catastrophic long-term effect for short-term gain.

In any case, it struck me as an interesting point to consider.