A few months ago, I posted a column entitled “Marco and the Two Friedmans” which addressed an argument implicitly made by Rubio during one of the debates. The gist of the argument was that big government inevitably takes sides with big business over small business, and thus is a driver of inequality. My conclusion was that this ignored the conflict between capital and labor that is the real source of inequality, but that Marco was at least entitled to some points for creativity.
About two weeks ago, there was an op-ed from Charles Koch in the WaPo about Bernie Sanders and inequality which said almost exactly the same thing. It’s reasonable to guess that Marco didn’t come up with this idea first.
In addition, it turns out that the line about Obama that Rubio repeated robotically during the New Hampshire debate comes more or less straight from Rush Limbaugh.
At least we know who his intellectual influences are. What, you were expecting Burke and Mill?