Rand Paul claiming that he'd appoint Milton Friedman to chair the Fed has set off a fantastic discussion of Friedman's legacy in the econoblogosphere. It has also proven to be a good framework to highlight the enormous distance between today's GOP and a party Reagan would have recognized.
Noah Smith sums up the discussion, provides the context necessary to put Krugman in perspective, and concludes that economists who jump into the political debate risk erasing the memory of their academic work.