His road to the White House has turned out to be rockier than expected, but Rand Paul’s social media game is smooth as ever.
In a tweet posted Wednesday afternoon, the Kentucky Republican managed to tweak Donald Trump while paying cheeky homage to his favorite Nobel Prize-winning Austro-British economist.
The featured illustration shows a swarm of people wading anxiously down a mountain pass to a fork, with signs signaling right for “Rand’s Road to Freedom” — and a bright, winding lane ahead — and left for “Trump’s Road to Serfdom,” which leads into an ominous-looking cave.
But what does it have to do with “serfdom”?
As Paul employs them, the words are a reference to Friedrich Hayek, who argued in his 1944 book “The Road to Serfdom” that placing increased power in the hands of a central government would pave the way for a decline into tyranny and totalitarianism.
“Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy,” Hayek wrote. “And at the critical moment obtained the support of many to whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.”
Paul’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Kentucky senator has been a fan of the pro-austerity, libertarian economist for years, often citing his work and in a 2013 interview with Bloomberg suggesting Hayek would’ve been his first choice to lead the Federal Reserve — if he was alive. (Hayek died in 1992.)
Paul’s second choice was Reagan-era economic guru and Hayek colleague Milton Friedman — also dead.
“Let’s just go with dead,” he ultimately decided. “Because then you probably really wouldn’t have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.