Over the last three years, many on the left have argued that the Republican Party has gone crazy. At first, I didn’t think much of this argument. However, I recently read a bizarre article opposing fiscal stimulus, and, in light of the whole stimulus debate, I could not help but contemplate the possibility that the Republican Party has indeed gone off the rails.

While the Republicans-are-crazy argument is not new, it seems to have really gained traction only after congressional Republicans near-unanimously opposed the 2009 stimulus bill. To many people on the left, this opposition seemed inexplicable. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert described the GOP as “a party without a brain.” Times columnist Frank Rich chimed in that Republicans are “isolated in [a] parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber,” labeling them as “out of touch with reality” and as “zealots” who were “committing suicide.” The Republicans-are-crazy argument has since snowballed so far that, earlier this month, The New York Times editorial board declared that the GOP is “a party consumed by anger and frustration, led around by its most extreme base and lacking any sense of forward direction.”

Recently I read an article opposing fiscal stimulus titled “Time on the Cross” that made me rethink the arguments of stimulus opponents. The author argued that discretionary fiscal stimulus is at best a temporary measure that will cause longer-term problems by increasing the national debt. In fact, the author found it difficult to understand why “massive, unsustainable deficit spending” is regarded as “The orthodox, sensible thing to do.” However, if this author decided to step out of the anti-stimulus echo chamber, he would have understood. After all, the United States’ most pressing issue is jobs, and, as Rich so wisely stated, “the government can’t create jobs without spending.”

But the article gets even worse. The author also argued that discretionary fiscal stimulus can only be justified by highly implausible economic assumptions that “only a professor could believe.” This argument is utterly nonsensical and shows just how far many people’s anti-intellectual streak has gone.

There’s only one problem — “Time on the Cross” was written by liberal economist Paul Krugman, not a Republican-leaning nut. Furthermore, he was not writing about our current economic crisis but about Japan in the late 1990s, which was experiencing a similar economic situation. In fact, Krugman was arguing that better monetary policy, and not fiscal stimulus, was the solution to Japan’s economic malaise.

Obviously Krugman, who is now strongly in favor of fiscal stimulus, has changed his views over the last decade, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, there is something wrong with condemning current fiscal stimulus opponents as crazy given how similar their arguments are to those that Krugman once made.

Thus, it is ridiculous to claim that Republicans have gone crazy just because they oppose fiscal stimulus. Keep in mind that the GOP’s “most extreme base” has almost certainly delivered its party’s presidential nomination to Mitt Romney, the candidate whose platform is centered on jobs and whose two chief economic advisors — Greg Mankiw of Harvard University and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, both well-respected economists — have been saying pretty much the same thing over the last four years that Krugman was saying in the late 1990s.

Obviously, the stimulus bill is not the only reason that many left-leaning pundits have hastily declared the Republican position crazy. For instance, many people seem to find it utterly inexplicable and unreasonable that anyone would oppose the federal requirement that all health insurance plans cover contraceptives, or that anyone would oppose the individual mandate in general. As little as a cursory glance at the opinion page of The Wall Street Journal would show otherwise — regardless of whether these positions are correct, they are certainly both explicable and reasonable.

So, the next time you find yourself nodding in agreement with an article that elucidates how the GOP has run off the cliff, you need to take some time to read the other side. While you have every right to disagree with the GOP’s policy positions, you need to recognize that these positions usually aren’t as crazy and extreme as many left-leaning publications would like you to believe.