The new darling of the Tea Party, David Brat, an Ayn Rand instructor when asked by MSNBC's Chuck Todd about most policy issues other than a craven look at immigration and supporting the free markets was either wishy-washy or refused to discuss his beliefs. When Todd asked him if he was for or against the federal minimum wage, he hemmed and hawed on without actually saying what he believes

Todd: Where are you on the minimum wage? Do you believe in it and would you raise it?

Brat: Minimum wage, I'm a free market guy. Our labor markets right now are already distorted from too many regulations. I think Cato estimates that 2 trillion dollars of regulatory problems and then throw Obamacare on top of that. The work hours is thrity a week....There's just distortion after distortion and we wonder why out labor markets are brohen.

Todd: Should there be a minimum wage in your opinion?

Brat: Ummm...I, I...I don't have a well crafted responses on that one., all I know is if you take the long run graph over two hundred years of the wage rate, it can not differ from your nation's productivity so you can't make up wage rates, right. I would love to for everyone...in Africa for example. all the children og God to make a hundred dollars an hour, right > I would love just to assert thathat would be the case, but you can't assert that unless you raise the productivity and then the wage follows...

Todd: It sounds like you're making the case against a federally mandated minimum wage.

Brat: I'm just making the case I've just made, You can't artificially make up wage rates, they have to be related to productivity.

I'll let our economist friends discuss the 200 year old graph, but it seems the only "well crafted" message he has comes straight out of the nativists handbook. it sounds like he's very much against a federal minimum wage rate because his whole economic philosphy partially comes from Ayn Rand, Libertarianism, Deidre McCloskey, religious virture and that free markets rule everything. His answers shows that he's not ready for prime time at this point for sure.

And in many corporate cases, productivity has nothing to do with it. Companies would rather pay lower wages for higher productivity anytime and the working class depend on a federally mandated wage to at least be able to eat a little food.

Here's some of his economic beliefs that were given much more straightforward than his responses to Chuck Todd:

David Brat's Economic Analysis

Economist David Brat may have been unprepared Wednesday to outline his position on the minimum wage, but for years he has given Virginia papers analysis about economic conditions...read on