Rick Perry's vitriolic rhetoric

PERRY'S VITRIOLIC RHETORIC: Did Rick Perry's comments on Fed chairman Ben Bernanke hurt him – or help him? "Bernanke, after all, was an original Bush appointee. The question becomes: Do Perry’s remarks disqualify him among some in the GOP establishment? Or is this where the Republican primary voters are right now?" I shouldn't think so; but, then again, there's a tendency in politics for people to believe exactly what politicians tell them. Erza Klein wonders why Rick Perry, a self-described 'conservative to the core', would stage an attack on Milton Friedman's preferred fiscal policy.

If you ignore the implied threat of violence against the head of America's central bank, Perry's position is unremarkable in today's Republican Party. But that is perhaps what is so remarkable about it. The GOP's turn against monetary policy is one of the most consequential and underdiscussed trends in economic policy. It was the conservative icon Milton Friedman, after all, who pioneered the argument that the Great Depression was largely the fault of poor monetary policy. His analysis had the dual advantages of being both true and useful to skeptics of government spending. It implied that there were more ways to prevent and respond to recessions than to simply have Congress take out the credit card.

It just so transpires that Perry has some, er, interesting thoughts on border security, too.