Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner offers another example of why statements Keynesian economist Paul Krugman made yesterday might no longer apply today, especially if the political party controlling the levers of government has changed.

Liberal New York Times blogger Paul Krugman doesn’t read conservatives, because conservatives are, ipso facto, hacks and unwonkish. He makes that clear repeatedly. He also has many smart, younger, liberal followers.

Matt O’Brien at The Atlantic, for instance, concurs with Krugman’s silly “Wonk Gap” thesis, citing as a prime example that the Heritage Foundation made an analogy between the federal budget and a family budget.

The analogy doesn’t work perfectly, because, well, no analogies work perfectly. They always have limits. In this case, the most important differences are (1) the federal government can raise tax rates through an act of Congress, while I can’t raise my income similarly, (2) the federal government can print its own money, (3) If you cut spending, you don’t singlehandedly slow down the economy around you.

But if you want to, say, explain to the average reader how much more Uncle Sam spent last year than he brought in, maybe it’s helpful to bring those trillions of dollars down to a scale more accessible — such as the median family’s annual budget. …

… But, no, the liberal Twittersphere won’t tolerate this unwonkishness. “The ‘credit card’ analogy is just wrong,” writes liberal economist Noah Smith, “since credit card interest rates are high and Treasury rates are low.”

The analogy itself is bad, hackish, unwonkish! Is this Heritage use of the family budget, credit card analogy, as O’Brien writes “a pretty damn good example” of some Left-Right “Wonk Gap”?

Well, here’s O’Brien himself tweeting out Ben Bernanke saying: “Not lifting the debt ceiling is like a family trying to improve its credit rating by not paying its credit card bills”.

CREDIT CARD! Clutching my pearls!

Here’s liberal think tank Center for American Progress chiding phony budget cuts: “It’s like trying to save money in your family budget by taking away your kids’ allowance when you don’t actually pay your kids an allowance.”

“Family budget!” Impeach!

That liberal blogger Krugman, pioneer of the “Wonk Gap Theorem of American Policy Discourse”?

“What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card?” To be fair, a Republican was president when Krugman wrote that, so it’s completely different.

Take back that Nobel Prize!!!