Freedom Line Blog

The Houston Chronicle (scroll to the bottom) has a helpful side-by-side chart comparing the positions of declared and presumptive GOP presidential candidates, all of whom lean in one way or another toward the Tea Party.  The line-up includes Texas Governor Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, and businessman Herman Cain.

Some highlights:

• AZ Immigration Law: Bachmann and Cain support it; Paul has “some reservations,” and Perry thinks it “would not be the right direction for Texas”

• Middle East Foreign Policy: Bachmann and Perry support Israel; Paul wants troop withdrawals from the Middle East; Cain is unequivocal: “You mess with Israel, you’re messing with the U.S.A.”

• Economy: Bachmann, Perry and Cain all support tax cuts; Paul wants to go even farther: abolish the Federal Reserve and reestablish the gold standard

Here’s hoping for a substantive debate featuring all these candidates and their ideas.  America needs it.

Politico’s Ben Smith reports that Jeffrey Bell of American Principles in Action is engaged in a 19-stop bus tour of Iowa to drum up support for returning U.S. monetary policy to the gold standard.  According to Bell, focus groups of Tea Party activists in the Midwest were “astonishing” in their support for the issue.

Bell’s goal is to get the Republican presidential field to incorporate the gold standard into their platforms.  Politico’s Smith explains the issue’s allure:

Arguments over the gold standard date back more than a century, and their ideological charge is linked in part to the fact that making dollars convertible to gold would in theory limit the government’s capacity to act in the economy.

For that reason alone, putting a spotlight on the gold standard would be a good investment of time for American voters.

With the Federal Reserve announcing it will increase the supply of paper money (i.e. dollars), it is once again time to consider the merits of (re)adopting the Gold Standard to help regulate the value of our nation’s currency.  Gold Standard 2012, a project of the American Principles Project, has a helpful video: