The winner of the Republican debate on the economy is — wait for it — Rick Santelli. He’s the CNBC star who, after candidates and their interviewers had droned on for 12,000 words, turned to Senator Cruz and asked him to “focus on our central bank, the Federal Reserve.” He asked: “Where do you want to take that? Do you want to get Congress involved in monetary policy, or is it time to slap the Fed back and downsize them completely? What are your thoughts? What do you believe?”

It was the first time in the Republican debate that anyone has opened up what could be the most explosive question of the campaign. Mr. Cruz understood its importance exactly. He asserted that the first thing to do is “audit the Fed,” a reference to the Federal Reserve Transparency Act that was introduced in the Senate by another presidential candidate, Rand Paul. It would establish a mechanism through which Congress could take a more active role in the formation of monetary policy.

This drives the liberals — and the Federal Reserve, but pardon the redundancy — crazy. They like to say that getting Congress involved would “politicize” monetary policy. When the Founders of America wrote the Constitution, however, it was precisely to the Congress — the most political branch of the government — that they delegated the monetary powers, the power to coin money, to borrow money, and to fix the standard of weights and measures.

So Mr. Cruz knew what he was doing with his answer. From the perspective of Wall Street, Mr. Cruz said, the Fed is doing a great job. “It’s driving up stock prices,” he said. “Wall Street is doing great.” He also noted that “the top one percent earn a higher share of our income than any year since 1928.” But, Mr. Cruz suggested, that isn’t helping what he called “working men and women” and the “single mom buying groceries,” who aren’t feeling the benefits of the Fed’s attempt at stimulus.

The Fed, Mr. Cruz said, “should get out of the business of trying to juice our economy and simply be focused on sound money and monetary stability, ideally tied to gold.” Mr. Santelli turned Senator Paul, who warned that the Federal Reserve has itself been lobbying Congress to stave off an audit. “I think,” Dr. Paul said, “we should examine how the Fed has really been part of the problem. You want to study income inequality, let’s bring the Fed forward and talk about Fed policy and how it causes income inequality.”

Added he: “Let’s also bring the Fed forward and have them explain how they caused the housing boom and the crisis, and what they’ve done to make us better or worse. I think the Fed has been a great problem in our society. What you need to do is free up interest rates. Interest rates are the price of money, and we shouldn’t have price controls on the price of money.” It is in the nature of these debates that one doesn’t get to give a discursive answer full of nuances, but, thanks to Mr. Santelli, Messrs. Cruz and Paul gave the best we’ve heard so far.

To us, rectifying the mistake of the 1970s, when America closed the gold window and went to a system of fiat money, is the greatest issue of the election. Has it been a success? Has it been a failure? Is it the root cause for the Great Recession, which burst on us with the collapse of the value of the dollar in the first years of the 21st century? Is it the reason the Federal Reserve, despite expanding its balance sheet by trillions, has been unable to return to a normal monetary policy?

Does this account for the great jobs crisis, which has consumed the entire Obama presidency. unemployment is above the average rate during the post-War era of Bretton Woods? That’s when the dollar was defined in law as a 35th of an ounce of gold. In the 2012 GOP primaries, Congressman Ron Paul pressed this issue so successfully that a monetary plank was put into the Republican platform. Governor Romney failed to run on it — and lost. So good for Senators Cruz and Paul. How about Rick Santelli as the next chairman of the Fed?