And that would be an interesting dynamic. If mainstream economics is left-leaning or Keynesian in that respect, and yet the vocal minority of far-right think tanks has an outsized influence on American politics, that would mean that politics trumps the social science. And that would be plausible.

Yet I suspect that that anti-libertarian upshot of economics wouldn't be entirely scientific or apolitical. Economics is shot through with philosophical assumptions and values. Economists can learn from history and thus from the failure of the libertarian agenda, just like the rest of us, but replacing a "free market" with something else is still a matter of picking winners and losers, which isn't a scientific problem.