He's got a few new old ideas, like term limits--which I'm sure makes his father, former 12-term Representative from TX, Ron Paul, proud, and a balanced budget scheme, which is probably not ever going to happen and is stuffed with bad ideas. But his real problem is that, as a freshman senator, he has to demonstrate some kind of consistent political philosophy--I'm not sure he does that, so far. He's also got to figure out a way to not come off as a prickly britches when someone points it out. If his views can be "mischaracterized", as he might put it, so regularly, perhaps he hasn't done a great job articulating himself?
Otherwise, if his plan is bits cadged from his old man's two runs for president and the 1994 Contract with America, one might wonder exactly what new thing he brings to the race?
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Just want to see some kind of real world empirical data that says that a nation that carries its own debt in its own currency is somehow better off balancing its budget. Debt is actually beneficial, at least until it's not, and if we can't come up with a rational argument for or against national debt than I'm not interested in your ideological story...
It's pretty much an argument as old as the nation itself--in order to finance the American Revolution, this country started with its feet deep in debt. Alexander Hamilton argued that the existence of the debt, for the sake of regularly paying it off to maintain good credit, was reason enough to keep some level of debt in perpetuity. Since our interest rate is effectively zero, debt at the moment isn't a really pressing concern for US attention.
I'm pretty sure that threatening to default on our debt, as GOP congressmen have threatened to do, would have Hamilton rolling in his grave (fucking up one's credit isn't an especially brilliant pay-down strategy, either). Although I'm not sure advocates of this scheme realize it, doing so would be a windfall for the nation's creditors--including other countries.
There's not much I have to say about the official entry of Senator Rand Paul to the 2016 GOP primary since he went and declared his old quotes "off-record"--because goodness knows there's fun to be had mining that pile.
Quick, Winston, shove that crap down the Memory Hole!
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