If you look at what businesses are saying about the economic slump, it's clear that the problem for them is lack of demand. People aren't buying stuff. But if you listen to Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, the problem is government regulation -- and the answer is to have less government.
The 2012 field wants to roll financial regulations back to the days before the Enron scandal. Ezra Klein wrote about this yesterday, and last night he gave us his theory for the enthusiasm:
"I take it as a generalized world view, that isn't even just about financial regulation. There's been a move in the Republican Party to say that what has gone wrong in the economy the last couple of years and even before that, both before the crisis and during the Obama years is government, is anything Democrats did."
But seriously, what's wrong is not regulations, not according to the so-called job creators. The chart below, from the Economic Policy Institute, shows the mood of businesses by president. Yes, concern about regulation has ticked upward under President Obama, which you'd expect given health reform and Wall Street reform. But that concern is still relatively low, over time, and it's far outstripped by worry that no one is buying.