In their illuminating study of Republican manipulation, professors Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that “the 2001 tax cuts did not pass because ordinary voters wanted them.” In supporting their assertion, the two dismiss as “close to meaningless” the fact that in some 25 contemporaneous polls voters favored the Bush tax cuts by an average of 56 to 33 percent, with Gallup finding 67 percent in favor, 27 percent opposed.

Bush’s tax cuts were certainly awful public policy, increasing the deficit, mortgaging our economy to foreign bond-holders and shifting the tax burden to the middle class. Alas, that does not mean voters don’t support them.

Hacker and Pierson offer great lessons but err in their understanding of public opinion about taxes. Caution about their tax story is reinforced by last week’s California election results.

The core of their argument is that the only correct way to ask about tax cuts is in relation to spending on other programs: “The crucial issue in gauging public preferences is not how respondents answered isolated questions about support for tax cuts but how voters weighed the tradeoff between tax cuts and other