High unemployment numbers may be good for Republicans in the next election, which makes it disturbing that Republican leaders have blocked any discussion of stimulus policies that might succeed in putting people back to work.

In fact, all job-creating proposals that involve spending money are considered verboten among both parties, because Republicans have cowed Democrats with the argument that the 2009 stimulus bill was an irredeemable failure and the deficit is causing unemployment.

If Republicans are as deeply concerned about the 13.9 million out-of-work people as they claim to be, they might have offered ideas of their own that have some possibility of creating jobs. Instead, they have been chanting the same tired and discredited mantras the party has offered since the 1980s: huge tax cuts, huge cuts in safety-net spending, the clear-cutting of regulations, and the inevitable balanced-budget amendment.

The latest example is the chimerical economic plan put forward on Tuesday by Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, who at least until this speech was considered one of the more reasonable of the suitors for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Pawlenty went much further right in proposing to slash government than even the House Republicans or most of the other candidates. The danger is that the race becomes a Bunyan-esque contest between tax cutters, with the public lulled by the false belief that the current tax rates (already low) are somehow inhibiting hiring.