Dave Weigel assesses the Rand Paul campaign's savvy, focusing on this new Washington Post piece on the Kentucky Republican senate primary where Paul, son of libertarian dynamo Ron, has taken the lead.
Paul seems to have an effective organization and a compelling personal narrative, but this kind of talk is inexcusable:
"Greece is defaulting right now on their debt," he told the breakfast group. "One of the next things you'll see is chaos on the streets. You'll see violence. . . . And it can happen even in America if we're not careful."
Look, Greece and the U.S. are in very different situations, and the U.S is highly unlikely to go through any sort of debt crisis, given that a decade from now, without changing anything, we still won't even be close to what Greece is going through. Frightening people about violence in the streets is at once pure demagoguery and a threat to our politics -- in order to solve the actual long-term budget challenge, we need a rational discussion of costs and benefits, not a panicked approach based on nightmare scenarios.
-- Tim Fernholz
