It's funny because the branding and the reality on the deficit are so vastly different. For 40 years now, the GOP's view has been that higher deficits are good because it puts pressure on the gov't to enact otherwise unpopular spending cuts, and Democrats have had the exact opposite view. Both parties' actual actions have reflected that, and there is a really, really clear difference in the trends. Yet Republicans are still able to run on being the anti-deficit party, Democrats still have no credibility with voters on being anti-deficit, and the MSM still takes it as a given that the difference between parties on the issue is the exact opposite of reality. It's such a strange dynamic if you think about it and look at the evidence.
That said, I think Cheney was right when he said that Reagan proved that deficits don't matter (politically). Few voters *really* care about the issue and the ones who claim to are just following their party's marketing (TBF, that's true of most issues--voters don't really care except as a way to express tribal solidarity). So most voters who *say* they care about shrinking deficits are really just expressing allegiance to the GOP, even though the GOP is the party consistently pushing for higher deficits. If the MSM made an effort to get this one right, and voters came to realize the reality, I think rather than seeing deficit-first voters switch parties, we'd just see them stop being deficit-first voters.
