Bachmann's Beach Reading: Economic Theory

Michele Bachmann gets the "weekend interview" treatment today in the Wall Street Journal, and editorial board member Stephen Moore writes that he has "no doubt" she will be announcing her candidacy soon and that it would be a "mistake to count her out." Some highlights from the flattering piece:

• What she reads: She likes economists Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams. "I'm also an Art Laffer fiend—we're very close. And [Ludwig] von Mises. I love von Mises. When I go on vacation and I lay on the beach, I bring von Mises."
• Palin feud? Nope, she says. "People want to see a mud-wrestling fight. They won't get it from me because I like Sarah Palin and I respect her." How about fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty; a good governor? "I really don't want to comment."

• Shades of Jack Kemp: She says she would campaign on a policy reminiscent of the supply-sider. "In my perfect world, we'd take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we're the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax."
• Selling Paul Ryan's plan: "We've got a huge messaging problem [on Medicare]. It needs to be called the 55-and-Under Plan. I can't tell you the number of 78-year-old women who think we're going to pull the rug out from under them."
• Hates TARP: Would she have let banks fail? "I would have. People think when you have a, quote, 'bank failure,' that that is the end of the bank. And it isn't necessarily. A normal way that the American free market system has worked is that we have a process of unwinding. It's called bankruptcy."

Click for the full interview. (More Michele Bachmann 2012 stories.)