Matt Yglesias notes that another GOP senator, in addition to declaring that Peter Diamond, one of the world’s greatest economists, isn’t fit to be on the board of the Fed, has joined the ranks of monetary cranks:

“We must be increasingly wary of the threat of inflation, yet the Fed continues to print money with reckless abandon,” Johanns said in a statement.

I have to admit that the triumph of the hard-money/goldbug view among Republicans has surprised even me. After all, Milton Friedman — who castigated the Fed for not printing enough money during the Great Depression — used to be the patron saint of conservative economics.

And let’s also note that we’ve had a strong test of monetary doctrines these past three years, and the inflation worriers have been proved overwhelmingly wrong. Yes, they’ve seized on the rise in commodity prices since last summer; but they have yet to find any signs of domestic inflation, as opposed to movements in prices determined on world markets and strongly driven by China and other emerging markets.

Look, very early on I tried to explain that “printing money” — what people who say that really mean is increases in the monetary base, which includes bank reserves as well as currency — doesn’t cause inflation, or even a rise in broader definitions of the money supply, when you’re in a liquidity trap. And I illustrated the point with historical examples. Here’s Japan:

And here’s America in the 30s:

And I predicted that we’d see the same kind of result — huge increases in the monetary base not translating into rises either in broader money or in prices — this time around. And sure enough:

So we have the whole Republican party jumping on to a doctrine that has not only been wrong historically, but has been wrong in the very recent past.

Amazing. And will Obama do anything about Peter Diamond?

Update: And now the Hair Club for Growth has turned the Diamond nomination into a loyalty test.