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GOP may embrace Ron Paul and the gold standard

The GOP could incorporate some of Ron Paul's fiscal ideas, including the gold standard, into their platform, putting ecnonomists into attack mode.

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Chrales Dharapak/AP
Ron Paul speaks at a rally at the University of South Florida Sun Dome on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012. Despite Paul's lack of enthusiasm for Mitt Romney, the GOP is thinking about incorporating some of Paul's economic ideas into the official party platform.

The GOP has decided to possibly incorporate some of Ron Paul's ideas into its platform, even as Ronnie has already publicly disowned their Presidential candidate (not a team player, that Ron Paul).

But I expect we'll hear a bit about the Fed and the gold standard this week from the convention regardless.  Here's Paul Krugman's standard issue anti-gold primer to start you off:

Say this for the GOP: by resurrecting the very bad, no good, truly awful idea of a gold standard, they’ve given us something to talk about.

Matthew O’Brien makes one obvious point: anyone who believes that the gold standard era was marked by price stability, or for that matter any kind of stability, just hasn’t looked at the evidence. The fact is that prices have been far more stable under that dangerous inflationist Ben Bernanke than they ever were when gold ruled.

I’d like to offer a different take. There is a remarkably widespread view that at least gold has had stable purchasing power. But nothing could be further from the truth.

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