In past debates, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain stole the show. They both are powerful speakers with strong beliefs, and both were relative unknowns.
Tonight, don’t be surprised to see Ron Paul hog the spotlight.
The reason: the economy is at the forefront of everybody’s mind this week, and Paul is the only Republican candidate who has demonstrated a coherent economic philosophy and can point towards a clear economic policy.
Romney has been a muddle of corporatist managerialism (think individual mandate) and boilerplate free-market talk. Bachmann has little or no specifics. Pawlenty has offered specifics, but hasn’t yet evinced a guiding economic principle. The others seem to place non-economic issues higher on the priority scale.
Paul knows what he believes. It’s called Austrian economics. Many establishment Republican econ-types reject Austrian teaching on the gold standard, and — more acutely today — whether the Fed should be injecting more money into the economy or not.
You may or may not agree with Paul, but at least he knows where he stands. We don’t know where Obama stands. People are looking for a direction on the economy. Paul provides that.
