Exactly...Krugman first incurred the wrath of the right wing venom machine when he pointed out, as a prominent economist, that bush's tax cuts didn't add up, and that he was in fact, lying, no surplus covered these tax cuts, his 2 and 2 did not equal 4. He also pointed out that the claim that "most of the cuts" went to the middle class was a lie. Now, years later, with our country bankrupted, our middle class more and more on thin ice, it is accepted that bush lied...Krugman was proved right.
They put into play the venom machine, and they have been caught lying about krugman time and time again, and not just by brad delong. Alterman has eviscerated them and so have others. One of their lies was so blatant, that a monkey could have caught them in it. They claimed that Krugman "took two words out of a whole speech, didn't even use the elipsis to indicate he was cutting the rest, what kind of slop was this?" Well, in fact, all you had to do was go to Krugman's actual column to find out that he had quoted a great part of the speech, not two words.
It's the tax cut religionists. Like all good religious people they will kill you if you get in their way...and they do not bother to be scrupulous about it.