Republican Party primary winner from Kentucky Rand Paul is already starting to backtrack on at least one issue he promoted during the campaign, assuming he has been characterized correctly (with today’s media, it’s anybody’s guess):

While father [Ron Paul] and son share a kinship in their belief in limited government, the younger Paul downplayed abolishing the federal income tax or the Federal Reserve—positions advocated by his father.

Ron Paul has been trying to get the Congress to conduct an audit of the Federal Reserve System for some time. This powerful but secretive organization has been blamed for creating economic booms and busts throughout its history beginning in 1913, especially in the situation leading to the latest economic crisis by setting artificially low interest rates that practically guaranteed the mortgage meltdown. For Ron Paul, the Fed has been the skunk in the woodpile causing America to lurch from one financial disaster to another. For Rand Paul, it seems the Fed isn’t all that much to worry about after all.

The news report also said he “advocated downsizing government but stopped short of calling for elimination of any specific cabinet-level agencies”—which it seems to me is just about the only quick and decisive way to downsize government. Federal agencies drunk on power need to go cold turkey; incremental attrition will never be effective.

Rand Paul hasn’t been elected to the Senate yet, but he’s already making noises like an inside-the-Beltway Republican. If he does make it there, I predict Rand Paul will go a long way in Washington.

—Mike Gray