Poll:RandPaul’ssupportslippingamongteapartiers?

Poll: Rand Paul’s support slipping among tea partiers?

posted at 12:01 pm on August 15, 2014 by Allahpundit

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A nice catch by WaPo’s Aaron Blake. Obvious caveats: It’s just one poll and tea party subsamples are necessarily small and prone to large margins of error. But as we get closer to the primaries and Paul breaks with conservative orthodoxy in ever more interesting ways, his standing on the right will be closely watched. This is just one data point, but do note it.

And indeed, it seems actual tea partiers are apparently noticing that Paul isn’t exactly their cup of tea. The new McClatchy-Marist College poll of the 2016 GOP presidential primary shows Paul’s share of the tea party vote dropping from 20 percent in April to 7 percent today — tied for fifth. Cruz, meanwhile, leads this demographic with 15 percent.

Similarly, an NBC News/Marist College poll of the Iowa GOP caucuses last month showed Paul leading Cruz and tied for first overall. But while Cruz’s support was almost completely among tea partiers, Paul actually did no better among that segment than he did overall. He was tied with Rick Santorum among tea party supporters.

Both of these polls have small sample sizes and shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but it’s notable that Paul doesn’t appear as reliant on tea party support as the other big supposed tea party candidate, Cruz. That’s by design. Paul is reaching out to the minority groups and religious conservatives for a reason; he knows he’s not the tea party-est of the tea partiers and that he can’t/won’t rely on their votes to deliver the GOP nomination in 2016.

The raw number is less interesting than the trend. Paul could make up eight percent in a primary campaign in one especially good week. But he’s trending downward, at least as far as Marist can tell. How come? Cruz, obviously, is gobbling up some of his support. He’s an orthodox conservative, just as most tea partiers are; whatever else Rand may be, he’s not orthodox. The higher Cruz’s profile gets, the more Rand will suffer on the right unless/until Cruz declares he’s not running. It could also be, of course, that Paul’s piled up a few too many heresies lately irrespective of what Cruz has been up to. Righties might indulge him a few breaks with convention but lately it seems like his agenda is nothing but breaks — he’s pushing sentencing reforms, criticizing the police for military-style riot control, and walking the usual tightrope on foreign interventions. At some point, the idea sets in that he’s not “one of us” and suddenly he’s tied in a 2016 primary poll of tea partiers with Chris Christie and actually trailing Jeb Bush.

One related problem for Rand that tends to be overlooked, I think, is the attitudinal difference between him and Cruz. It’s not merely that Cruz is more in line with conservative orthodoxy; it’s that he has the right enemies. I mentioned that the other day when I posted that little game of word association Paul played with a reporter in Kentucky. When asked what word came to mind when Chris Christie is mentioned, he smirked and said “bridges.” When asked what word came to mind when Obama is mentioned, he didn’t say “IRS” or “executive overreach” or “ObamaCare” or “Benghazi” or “Fast & Furious” or any of the other 8,000 things that set tea partiers off about The One. He said “affable but ineffectual.” And I understand why he said it — he’s not going to throw a roundhouse at the first black president in the middle of courting black voters — but it’s impossible to imagine Cruz responding the same way. He would have laid Obama out because he knows that’s what his base wants and he’s superb at delivering it. Nor is it just Obama whom Rand’s gone a bit soft on. He endorsed Mitch McConnell and defended Thad Cochran’s tactics of wooing Democratic voters to win a Republican primary. One thing tea partiers cherish about Cruz is that establishmentarians hate him and Cruz seems to relish it. Rand doesn’t; on the contrary, he’s gone out of his way to make nice with them. There’s obviously strategy there too given his fears of being marginalized in the primary as a kook and outspent by an establishment opponent, but don’t be surprised if some tea partiers react badly to it.

And yet, and yet, if Cruz decides not to run and to endorse Paul instead, he’d almost certainly be the tea-party consensus choice and a legit contender for the nomination, no? He may not be their favorite anymore but he’s not anathema.

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Tags: 2016, GOP, Marist, mcclatchy, Rand Paul, republican, Tea Party, Ted Cruz

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RandPaulonFerguson:Wemustdemilitarizethe

Rand Paul on Ferguson: We must demilitarize the police

posted at 5:21 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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As expected, here he is belatedly seizing an obvious opportunity. The only question for Paul was which angle of the Ferguson drama to emphasize. Racial disparities in how the law is enforced? He mentions it in his op-ed but rarely does a would-be presidential nominee profit from expounding at length on race at a moment when tensions are high. State suppression of civil liberties, in particular the police restricting press activity in Ferguson? He mentions that too but no Republican will ever get much mileage from defending the media.

How about the militarization of the police, then? That’s the sweet spot for Paul as it influences both of the other problems above and carries obvious appeal to all of the constituencies he’s trying to reach, namely, blacks, libertarians, and conservatives that have grown more leery of state power in the Obama era. And best of all, it’s an issue on which there’s bipartisan support. There are valuable pieces online this morning on how the feds turned small-town cops into Special Forces by Alec MacGillis of TNR, Conn Carroll of Townhall, and Mark Thompson of Time — left, right, and center-ish. Big government has shoveled billions in money and materiel at PDs since 9/11, with predictable results. And if there’s one thing that summarizes the Paul brand, it’s skepticism of big government in all its aspects.

Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.

This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism…

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

Racial double standards, the NSA, the war on drugs, federal spending, even a whiff of overreaction to 9/11 — the whole Paul policy portfolio is there in service to the broader point about demilitarization. He’ll have support from some veterans too:

“You see the police are standing online with bulletproof vests and rifles pointed at peoples chests,” said Jason Fritz, a former Army officer and an international policing operations analyst. “That’s not controlling the crowd, that’s intimidating them.”…

King added that, instead of deescalating the situation on the second day, the police responded with armored vehicles and SWAT officers clad in bulletproof vests and military-grade rifles.

“We went through some pretty bad areas of Afghanistan, but we didn’t wear that much gear,” said Kyle Dykstra, an Army veteran and former security officer for the State Department. Dykstra specifically pointed out the bulletproof armor the officers were wearing around their shoulders, known as “Deltoid” armor.

“I can’t think of a [protest] situation where the use of M4 [rifles] are merited,” Fritz said.

Paul Szoldra, an Afghanistan vet, made the best point I’ve seen on this in a piece for Business Insider a few days ago. He too marveled at the use of M4s and the Bearcat, but the thing Szoldra couldn’t get over was the camouflage pants that some of the cops were wearing. You can understand why they’d wear body armor but what conceivable purpose is served by wearing clothing like that while patrolling city streets? The answer, obviously, is psychology. The pants don’t make the cop blend into his surroundings but they do put him in a warrior frame of mind and signal to onlookers that he’s apt to respond like a soldier would if challenged. That’s the core vice of police militarization, I think. It’s not that the cops are lobbing grenades through people’s windows, it’s that they feel more free to take lesser but still heavy handed measures like tear-gassing a camera crew. Sometimes, when you’re pacifying a restive enemy population in an occupied zone, you need to be a little rough with the locals. Aren’t the police supposed to be part of “the locals” themselves?

Anyway. Expect Paul to float some sort of bill cutting federal funds for military gear for locals PDs. There’s already some support for demilitarization among Democrats. It’ll be hard for Obama to resist.

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Tags: 9/11, cops, demilitarize, federal, ferguson, michael brown, police, Rand Paul

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TedCruzonFerguson:Reportersshouldneverbe

Ted Cruz on Ferguson: Reporters should never be detained for doing their jobs

posted at 11:21 am on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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A terse statement with an important implied acknowledgment, namely, that those two reporters really were detained for no reason better than that they were doing their jobs. And if you doubt that, watch the clip below of how the cops treated a camera crew from Al Jazeera America. The crew isn’t interfering with anyone; their apparent crime is recording police activity at a moment when the police don’t want evidence preserved of how they’re behaving. Result: A faceful of tear gas for reporters and their lighting equipment dismantled.

And yet some voters would defend even this, which is why Cruz’s statement is so gently and carefully worded.

Together, we should all mourn the loss of life in Ferguson, Missouri and work to keep our communities safe and free. Police officers risk their lives every day to keep us safe, and any time a young man loses his life in a confrontation with law enforcement, it is tragic.

All of our prayers are with the citizens of Ferguson, that the violence will subside and peace will be restored. Reporters should never be detained — a free press is too important — simply for doing their jobs. Civil liberties must be protected, but violence is not the answer. Once the unrest is brought to an end, we should examine carefully what happened to ensure that justice is served.

Where’s Rand Paul in all this? His office said this morning that he’d weigh in today but he missed an obvious chance to jump out in front of it. He’s spent the last year trying to sell black voters on the virtues of libertarianism and now he’s got a jackpot example of government gone too far — police crackdowns, media suppression, and a federal government that’s disengaged now after shoveling endless federal dollars at local PDs to arm up. He might not win any votes for having spoken up sooner, but then I’ve never thought the point of Rand’s outreach to blacks was to win votes; it’s to inoculate him later from the inevitable attacks that he’s some sort of neo-confederate for questioning the 1964 Civil Rights Act and working for his dad after those racist newsletters were published. Showing up in Ferguson yesterday or the day before, if only to cool both sides down by bringing a hot political spotlight to what’s happening, would have helped with that. But maybe Paul too thinks he can only go so far in criticizing the cops before it starts to bite him in a Republican primary. Dave Weigel’s right that the consensus conservative view on all this is momentarily uncertain.

I’ll leave you with this, from Kevin Williamson, since Paul’s unlikely to say it himself:

The behavior of the Ferguson and St. Louis County police in this matter is illuminating. They are ridiculously militarized suburban police dressed up like characters from Starship Troopers and pointing rifles at people from atop armored vehicles, i.e. the worst sort of mall ninjas. They are arresting people for making videos of them at work in public places, which people are legally entitled to do, a habit they share with many other police departments. Protecting life, liberty, and property — which is the job of the police — does not require scooping people up for making phone videos; in fact, it requires not scooping people up for making phone videos.

These confrontations are a reminder of the eternal question: Who? Whom? Who is to protect and serve whom here? Is government our servant or our master?

A police department habitually conducting its business in secrecy and arresting people for documenting its public actions is more of a threat to liberty and property than those nine looters are.

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Tags: cops, ferguson, First Amendment, media, michael brown, police, protests, Rand Paul, riots, Ted Cruz

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Rand Paul sums up Chris Christie in one word: “Bridges”

RandPaulsumsupChrisChristieinone

DREAMerconfrontsSteveKing:Here,tearupmy

DREAMer confronts Steve King: Here, tear up my DACA card if you don’t want me here

posted at 3:21 pm on August 5, 2014 by Allahpundit

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As many others have noted, the high point here is Rand Paul bailing out mid-bite as soon as he hears the word “DREAM.” He’ll get in your face on foreign policy and he’ll push bold, controversial ideas like restoring voting rights to felons, but put him on camera in the middle of a squabble between Steve “Cantaloupe Calves” King and a pair of illegals when he’s gearing up for 2016 and all that’s left is one of those little dust clouds like in a Roadrunner cartoon.

If not for that, my favorite moment would be Erika Andiola reassuring King that DACA is constitutional because her companion’s an attorney and he thinks it is. Back in reality, Conn Carroll notes correctly that the fact that Andiola has a “DACA card” at all is proof that what Obama’s been up to isn’t executive business as usual:

In the past, presidents have granted Deferred Action status to small groups of immigrants for humanitarian and foreign policy reasons (President Bush granted such status to foreign students affected by Hurricane Katrina).

But never before had a president granted such broad based relief to the general illegal immigrant population, created a special form for them to apply, and required a set application fee to receive Deferred Action benefits.

Obama’s DACA program changed all that. Instead of just prioritizing otherwise law biding illegal immigrants, like Andiola, at the bottom of the immigration enforcement list, Obama gifted them a legal status and work permits (and is even forcing states to issue them drivers licenses). This is a night and day change from “what his predecessors have done (or rather, not done)” on the issue.

And now we’re on the verge of expanding that treatment to five million more people. What you’re seeing here, actually, is a microcosm of the national immigration debate. King opposes amnesty through whatever means but is especially exercised about Obama’s DACA power grab. Andiola and her friend, while willing to argue the legal merits half-heartedly, are clearly following a “let’s do what’s ‘right’ and worry about what’s constitutional later” approach. And of course reporters are on alert for anything King says that can be used as a cudgel against him and the GOP, with underwhelming results this time out. Maybe they’ll have better luck after Obama announces DACA II and Republicans get really mad.

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Whycan’tRandPaulgethisdadto

Why can’t Rand Paul get his dad to stop sabotaging him?

posted at 2:41 pm on August 5, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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I generally think Rand Paul is a positive influence on the Republican Party. From drug policy, to sentencing reform, to same-sex marriage; Paul’s libertarian views inform his hands-off position on a number of contentious social issues. Or, in his words, “I think Republicans could only win in general if they become more live and let live — ‘leave me alone.’”

For a generation of young people who consider themselves fiscally conservative but socially liberal, Paul’s prominence robs center-left youth of the ability to dismiss the GOP outright as either bigoted or theocratic. Paul forces the young voters to internalize and counter conservative and libertarian arguments on social policy – a development Democratic strategists are not happy about.

The Kentucky Senator is also an important thorn in the “Republican establishment’s” side. Paul recently endorsed Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) for reelection over his Chamber of Commerce-backed primary opponent. Amash, another outspoken libertarian politician who often adopts positions matters foreign and domestic contrary to Republican orthodoxy, is another benefit to the party. You don’t have to agree with either of these GOP politicians to appreciate that internal dissent and debate makes for a vibrant and healthy political movement.

But that equation changes when one of these divergent libertarian voices seeks to become the leader of his party and the President of the United States. Paul, like his father before him, clearly has designs on the White House, and he has been calibrating his position on a variety of issues in order to appeal to a broader universe of Republican primary voters.

For example, since the start of the most recent conflict in Gaza, Paul has been actively attempting to get on the right side of the majority of GOP primary voters by expressing his support for Israel insofar as that support comports with his support for American retrenchment. Writing in National Review recently, Paul insisted that the appropriate American response to the conflict was to cut off U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority.

But Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, is responsible for the latest round of violence. The P.A. has been a relatively responsible actor in this conflict. Furthermore, this was not Paul’s first attempt to seek the end of foreign aid to the P.A… or, for that matter, Israel. Or the rest of the world. In fact, Paul has long advocated for the cessation of all foreign aid and assistance – a miniscule fraction of the federal budget. The senator’s about face on this issue is nakedly, transparently political. For a politician with aspirations for higher office, there is nothing remarkable about this.

However, it is clear that Paul’s natural instincts on foreign affairs are closer to those of his father, even if he is savvier at articulating his preferred policy solutions. Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), however, is as outspoken as ever and continues to display none of his son’s savoir-faire. The former Texas congressman’s views on foreign affairs are well outside the Republican mainstream, conspiratorial, and extraordinarily damaging to his son’s presidential ambitions.

Take, for example, Ron Paul’s most recent tinfoil hat theorizing (and by “most recent,” I mean yesterday). In this clip, the good doctor asks “Why won’t Obama just leave Ukraine alone?” He proceeds to embrace virtually every conspiratorial notion the Kremlin has advanced in order to absolve themselves of the blame they deserve for arming and assisting pro-Russian rebels who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 on July 17.

Along with claiming that the global intelligence agencies which blamed Russia for providing Russian separatist with the SA-11 anti-air missile that took down MH17 had not been “proven,” he proceeded to suggest that the American accusation that Russia was guilty of “creating the conditions” which led to violence in eastern Ukraine is problematic.

“That is a dangerous measure of culpability, considering U.S. support for separatist groups in Syria and elsewhere,” Paul said.

This is a gross conflation of terms. The Kremlin seeks to create the equivalence between America’s support for moderate anti-Assad resistance fighters (who do not seek separatism, but seek merely to overthrow a genocidal dictator who happens to enjoy Moscow’s backing) and their support for separatist rebels in Ukraine. Paul is buying directly into Russian propaganda, and his son will have to answer for it on the campaign trail.

Again, this is merely the latest in a string of episodes in which the elder Paul has kneecapped his son by repeating dangerous anti-Western propaganda disseminated by the enemies of the United States. Republican primary voters will not stand for that, and Paul may be faced with the tormenting prospect of having to denounce his own father. Neither Paul could wish for that outcome, so why can’t Rand convince his father to keep his thoughts on international affairs to himself?

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RandPaul:I’veneverproposedcuttingoffaid

Rand Paul: I’ve never proposed cutting off aid to Israel

posted at 8:41 pm on August 4, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I knew before reading the story that that was untrue because I remembered the clip where he talked about it. Alllll the way back in January 2011, right after Paul was sworn in as a senator, he floated a budget proposal that would have cut $500 billion in federal spending — in one year. That was his way of raising the bar after all the attention lavished on Paul Ryan for his “roadmap” to entitlement reform. If you want to see fiscal restraint, Paul seemed to be saying, get a load of this. It was a smart bit of branding, introducing himself as the tea party/libertarian hybrid who’d be willing to push the Overton window further right than any of the business-as-usual types already in Washington. And as the Overton window moved, so too would America’s approach to foreign aid. No more aid to anyone, Paul demanded. We simply can’t afford it. Does that include Israel, asked Wolf Blitzer? Watch the first clip below, from late January 2011, for the answer.

Yahoo News asked him the question again today. Result:

“I haven’t really proposed that in the past,” Paul told Yahoo News when asked if he still thought the U.S. should phase out aid to Israel, which has been battling Hamas in Gaza for weeks. “We’ve never had a legislative proposal to do that. You can mistake my position, but then I’ll answer the question. That has not been a position—a legislative position—we have introduced to phase out or get rid of Israel’s aid. That’s the answer to that question. Israel has always been a strong ally of ours and I appreciate that. I voted just this week to give money—more money—to the Iron Dome, so don’t mischaracterize my position on Israel.”

He’s never supported cutting aid specifically to Israel, I think he means to say, but yeah, he’s most certainly supported turning off the tap to the world at large, Israel included. You can understand why his memory might be “foggy” on that: Foreign policy is his biggest liability in the primaries and there’s no foreign-policy litmus test within the GOP as important as support for Israel, something Paul’s been at pains to demonstrate since he was a candidate. We’re close enough to the 2016 campaign now, I guess, that rather than try to explain his 2011 position with a “yes, but,” he’s opting for a clear if misleading “hell, no.” In fact, 2011 wasn’t the last time he supported ending all foreign aid, including to Israel; Dave Weigel’s catalogued a few other comments from over the last few years. Sometimes he frames the question in terms of Israel being wealthy enough to pay for its own defense, other times he uses the more hawk-pleasing argument that cutting aid would actually free Israel to hit its jihadi neighbors like Hamas and Iran as hard as it wants without meddling from the United States.

Either way, he no longer holds this view. Watch the second clip below from last week (via MFP) and you’ll see that he supports funding for Iron Dome. Maybe that’s because purely defensive weapons are more copacetic with his view of foreign entanglements or maybe it’s because, having tried and failed to convince conservatives that cutting aid could be good for America and for Israel, he’s decided to give in before 2016 rivals like Ted Cruz start paying attention to this issue. I tend to think he realized at some point that his larger project of cutting all foreign aid would face much greater resistance within the GOP if it included Israel, so by bowing to them on that point and building up some credibility with hawks now, they might be willing to support cutting aid for everyone but Israel later. Whatever the answer, though, if you’re skittish about Paul’s foreign policy you can take some comfort in the fact that, unlike his old man, he apparently can and will bend towards majority Republican opinion if crossing it imperils his career. In fact, read Leon Wolf’s post at Red State noting that this isn’t the first time Paul has flip-flopped on an issue for apparently political reasons. For most politicians, that would be a black mark. For Paul, who’s busy flipping towards mainstream conservatives, maybe it’s reassuring to the voters he needs.

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RandPaulbustsarhymeagainstGrimes

Rand Paul busts a rhyme against Grimes

posted at 12:31 pm on August 3, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Political figures leaving the well worn routine of policy stump speeches and venturing into the realm of verse doesn’t always work out all that well for them. (Rapper MC Rove, anyone?) But at this year’s edition of the Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky, Paul Rand decided to try his hand at rhyming poetry, going on the attack against Alison Lundergan Grimes and in support of Mitch McConnell.

“There once was a woman from Kentucky,
who thought in politics she’d be lucky,
So she flew to L.A. for a Hollywood bash.
She came home in a flash with buckets of cash.
To liberals, she whispers: coal makes you sick.
In Kentucky, she claims coal makes us tick.
To the liberals, she sells her soul – the same ones who hate Kentucky coal.
One thing we know is true, one thing we know is guaranteed,
she’d cast her first vote for Harry Reid.
Grimes’ real pledge is to Obama; her first vote is to Reid;
as for Kentucky, if that happens, it’s too bad indeed.”

Not too shabby.

It remains to be seen if Paul’s support will rally any additional voters to Mitch’s cause. The Senate Minority Leader could apparently use all the help he can get, since the last round of numbers from the Bluegrass Poll shows McConnell with only a 2% lead over Grimes. Another poll from the same time period also shows that Kentucky voters are fed up with waiting for the candidates to face off in a debate.

Two-thirds of Kentucky voters say U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes have an obligation to the people of Kentucky to debate each other, according to the latest Bluegrass Poll.

The poll found that 66 percent of voters believe McConnell, a Republican, and Grimes, a Democrat, should debate, and large majorities of every demographic group polled said the two should face off.

At least 13 people and organizations have offered to host the debates, and while both McConnell and Grimes have accepted at least one offer, they can’t agree on which debate to attend together.

Generally when you see a race without debates it’s a case of a clear leader wanting to dodge the event to hang on to their edge and not give the underdog a chance to turn the momentum. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here, though. Given that both candidates are claiming to be ready to go, but disagreeing on the forum, it’s more likely that each wants to find a setting and moderator that won’t be quite so hostile to them. That could be a tricky feat to pull off, but hopefully some neutral ground will be located and the voters will get a chance to see the candidates put through their paces.

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RandPaulcallsoutMSNBC…onMSNBC

Rand Paul calls out MSNBC… on MSNBC

posted at 6:41 pm on July 30, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Amid a bipartisan push to reform America’s drug sentencing laws, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday to drum up grassroots support for this reform effort.

While their proposal has a lot of merit, Paul seemed to me to be wasting his breath appearing on MSNBC where the message of prison and drug sentencing reform is already a winning one. It would seem more prudent for Booker and Paul to take their message to conservative outlets where there would be resistance to this reform.

But the conversation quickly turned from Paul’s proposal to comments he made before he was even elected to office about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. MSNBC’s flagship host Rachel Maddow went to town on Paul for suggesting that the CRA might have violated the rights of business owners. Paul’s take on the Civil Rights Act remains a bugaboo for Maddow even to this day (the most recent segment on her program litigating the Kentucky senator’s position on civil rights broadcast on July 25.)

But Paul spun that moment in his favor rather deftly and, as Ace of Spades blogger Drew M. suggested, probably scored some points among conservatives when he attacked that network’s myopia and serial fact distortion.

“I’ve always been in favor of the Civil Rights Act,” Paul said when asked about his 2010 comments. “So, people need to get over themselves writing all this stuff that I’ve changed my mind on the Civil Rights Act.

“Have I ever had a philosophical discussion about all aspects of it? Yeah, and I learned my lesson – to come on MSNBC and have a philosophical discussion, the liberals will come out of the woodwork and they go crazy and say you’re against the Civil Rights Act, and you’re some terrible racist,” Paul continued, effectively jabbing at liberalism’s anxiety with dissent and unpopular thought.

MSNBC host Ari Melber asked Paul why he simply did not explain that his take on the CRA had “evolved” over the years. Paul replied that there had been no evolution to explain.

“I’ve been attacked by half a dozen people on your network trying to say that I’m opposed to the Civil Rights Act,” Paul added. “So, I’m not really willing to engage with people who are misrepresenting my viewpoint on this.”

Melber protested. “I think the honest discussion, as you said, that some titles of it, Title 2 and Title 7 that relate to…”

“The honest discussion would be that I never was opposed to Civil Rights Act,” an exasperated Paul interjected. “And when your network does 24-hour news telling the truth, then maybe we can get somewhere with the discussion.”

Boom.

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RandPallcallsoutMSNBC…onMSNBC

Rand Pall calls out MSNBC… on MSNBC

posted at 6:41 pm on July 30, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Amid a bipartisan push to reform America’s drug sentencing laws, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday to drum up grassroots support for this reform effort.

While their proposal has a lot of merit, Paul seemed to me to be wasting his breath appearing on MSNBC where the message of prison and drug sentencing reform is already a winning one. It would seem more prudent for Booker and Paul to take their message to conservative outlets where there would be resistance to this reform.

But the conversation quickly turned from Paul’s proposal to comments he made before he was even elected to office about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. MSNBC’s flagship host Rachel Maddow went to town on Paul for suggesting that the CRA might have violated the rights of business owners. Paul’s take on the Civil Rights Act remains a bugaboo for Maddow even to this day (the most recent segment on her program litigating the Kentucky senator’s position on civil rights broadcast on July 25.)

But Paul spun that moment in his favor rather deftly and, as Ace of Spades blogger Drew M. suggested, probably scored some points among conservatives when he attacked that network’s myopia and serial fact distortion.

“I’ve always been in favor of the Civil Rights Act,” Paul said when asked about his 2010 comments. “So, people need to get over themselves writing all this stuff that I’ve changed my mind on the Civil Rights Act.

“Have I ever had a philosophical discussion about all aspects of it? Yeah, and I learned my lesson – to come on MSNBC and have a philosophical discussion, the liberals will come out of the woodwork and they go crazy and say you’re against the Civil Rights Act, and you’re some terrible racist,” Paul continued, effectively jabbing at liberalism’s anxiety with dissent and unpopular thought.

MSNBC host Ari Melber asked Paul why he simply did not explain that his take on the CRA had “evolved” over the years. Paul replied that there had been no evolution to explain.

“I’ve been attacked by half a dozen people on your network trying to say that I’m opposed to the Civil Rights Act,” Paul added. “So, I’m not really willing to engage with people who are misrepresenting my viewpoint on this.”

Melber protested. “I think the honest discussion, as you said, that some titles of it, Title 2 and Title 7 that relate to…”

“The honest discussion would be that I never was opposed to Civil Rights Act,” an exasperated Paul interjected. “And when your network does 24-hour news telling the truth, then maybe we can get somewhere with the discussion.”

Boom.

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Quotesoftheday postedat10:41

Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on July 23, 2014 by Allahpundit

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This weekend, Sen. Rand Paul will headline a “conservatarian” conference in San Francisco. So, just what is a conservatarian? Hard to say…

[David] Boaz—the leader of the premiere libertarian think tank in the country—had never heard of the term “conservatarian,” and threw some cold water on the idea that this type of libertarianism is a novel idea for Californians.

Which brings us back to the original question—is “conservatarianism” a new, tech-minded branch of libertarianism, or is it the same old philosophy with a shiny new buzzword?

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Potential GOP presidential contender Rand Paul said Wednesday that no one should question Israel’s actions in a time of war.

“I wouldn’t question what they need to do to defend themselves,” the Kentucky Republican told conservative radio host Glenn Beck on “The Blaze.” “These are difficult decisions people make in war when someone attacks you. It’s not our job to second guess.”…

“The first thing I do is say absolutely no money goes to Hamas, no foreign aid gets in the hands of Hamas,” Paul responded. He added that he’d make sure Israel’s defense was well-supplied and funded — and even proposed an Iron Dome equivalent for the United States.

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Paul has donned a yarmulke and danced to Hebrew songs. He has prayed at the Western Wall and visited a prominent New Jersey yeshiva (a religious school where a major GOP contributor served as his tour guide). He’s dialed into one of the country’s most popular Jewish radio programs and held off-the-record conference calls with Jewish leaders across more than 30 states. He has introduced pro-Israel legislation (title: the “Stand With Israel Act”), speechified about it in the Senate, and, relentlessly, sought a private audience with the wealthiest and most influential Jewish Republicans in the nation…

The charm offensive has two goals at its core. The first is to try to establish Paul in the foreign policy mainstream of Republicanism, particularly on the signal issue of Israel, which is of key importance to both Jewish voters and evangelical Christians. The second is to win over, or at the least neutralize, the moneyed class of hawkish Israel defenders—free-spending billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer chief among them—who Paul’s advisers know represent among the most significant impediments to his becoming the party’s next standard-bearer…

“I’m not buying it,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as a top national security adviser to President George W. Bush and is now a senior fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations. Paul and Abrams had a private sit-down on Capitol Hill last fall. “You can’t be an isolationist and credibly pro-Israel. The idea that you’re isolationist for every other country and every other issue in the world except Israel just is not persuasive.” (Paul, for his part, vigorously rejects the “isolationist” label.)…

As former Sen. Norm Coleman, an RJC board member and influential Jewish political figure who has been courted by Paul, said, “He’s doing a very good job clearing up the perception that he’s not his dad.”

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Perhaps more interesting than this hawks-versus-libertarians dispute, which is an old argument, is who Paul’s antagonists have been. Both Perry and Cruz are politicians who’ve long been associated with the Tea Party, as Paul has. Perry, in his ill-fated 2012 campaign, warned of “military adventurism,” called for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and advocated cutting off aid to Pakistan. Cruz was lumped in with Paul in the category McCain derided as “wacko birds” after Paul’s 2013 drone filibuster. Yet both Perry and Cruz are anxious to differentiate themselves from Paul by turning him into a peacenik caricature. (As Dave Weigel points out, there is personal animosity behind the Perry-Paul spat.) Paul and his allies, for their part, tend to see a neoconservative conspiracy in the way he’s so often used as a punching bag. In an interview last year, Paul described his antagonists to me as “the perpetual war caucus,” and added, “I think much of their chagrin is they see that we’re winning. They’re on the losing side of history.”

Rand Paul is performing an admirable service for the Republican Party: forcing it to have an uncomfortable family conversation—airing an internal dispute that otherwise might get papered over. A confident and opportunistic politician, Paul is eager to take on his critics; by doing so, he believes he can rid the GOP of the stain of Bush’s policies and expand its appeal among voters alienated by Iraq.

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[I]t’s fallen to Rand Paul to revive his party’s standing with black Americans. After the splashy performances that sealed his reputation (a filibuster here, a standing ovation at Berkeley there), Paul has settled into something of a grind as the rest of the GOP’s presumptive presidential contenders take turns trying to cement themselves as the party’s antithesis to all things Paul…

Rand Paul seems to understand what all of America’s would-be Anti-Rands do not: The GOP cannot content itself with picking up “spare” minority votes here and there, mostly from Latinos, and celebrating the relative handful of black figures who stubbornly insist on being Republican.

As a Floridian Anti-Rand like Marco Rubio can attest, the Republican Party doesn’t really have a generic race problem. Lots of minority voters are simply for what the Democratic Party offers, not against the GOP because it strikes them as racist. Black Americans, however, have a different, distinct experience with the GOP. One minute, they were the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. The next, they were the party opposed to the Civil Rights Act. No amount of theorizing or intellectualization can get around the impact of that change…

If the GOP’s contending candidates won’t at least accommodate his politics of race, the Anti-Rand who rises to the top faces the discouraging prospect of appearing to oppose them. In that case, defeating Paul will come at the cost of losing to the ghost of Goldwater.

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In a brief speech before a panel moderated by Nicole Austin-Hillery of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice, the Kentucky senator and libertarian icon called the criminal justice system the “largest impediment to voting and employment in this country.” The U.S legal system, he said, has trapped many nonviolent felons in a place where they “can’t vote and can’t work.”…

Traditionally, the politics of enfranchising felons has fallen along partisan lines. Democrats want to expand the electorate, and Republicans want to restrict it. But Paul’s advocacy for allowing felons to vote seems to be based mostly on conscience. After all, there can’t be much political gain in appealing to a class of citizens who aren’t yet able to vote…

Instead, the voting rights advocacy puts Paul in a unique position moving forward. Increasingly, the Kentucky Republican seems to be pushing a libertarian brand of compassionate conservatism—without the big-government trappings of the Bush era. His emphasis on issues such as felon voting and the plight of Christians in the Middle East is designed to resonate with evangelicals without alienating moderates. It’s not entirely clear what the ideology of a Rand Paul Republican would look like in 2016, but as Tuesday’s event shows, it certainly won’t look quite like the platform of any other politician.

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Early polls of the 2016 contest have shown Paul leading about half the time in New Hampshire and generally running toward the front of the pack in Iowa as well. Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) both led these two states early on but have since seen their support fall off (thanks toe Christie’s bridge scandal and Rubio’s dabbling with comprehensive immigration reform), and nobody else is as consistently toward the top in both states.

It’s very rare that a presidential candidate excels in both of the two early states, given Iowa is dominated by evangelical Christians and New Hampshire has a more moderate bent. And it’s generally assumed that any candidate who wins both of would likely end the race right then and there — as was (essentially) the case on the Democratic side in 2004 with John Kerry.

Paul’s unusual profile appears to have appeal to these disparate constituencies. He has spent considerable time appealing to the kind of Christians you’d see in Iowa, but his libertarian streak fits nicely with New Hampshire as well. He talks to both tea party crowds and to non-traditional Republican groups, including historically black colleges…

Paul isn’t the only one who could seems capable of pulling off an unprecedented two-state sweep, but for now, he seems to have the best chance.

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Via Reason TV.

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Tags: 2016, compassionate conservatism, foreign policy, GOP, libertarian, Rand Paul, rubio

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Perry:RandPaul’spositiononIraqis“disheartening

Perry: Rand Paul’s position on Iraq is “disheartening … curiously blind”

posted at 5:31 pm on July 12, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Rick Perry has had quite the renaissance this summer. The Texas governor lowered his profile after his unsuccessful 2012 run for the Republican presidential nomination, focusing instead on finishing his last term in Texas before deciding on his future. After the border crisis erupted, though, Perry has emerged again as a national leader in the GOP. That has buzz going about a potential second presidential run, and the Christian Science Monitor concluded that Perry won the week against Barack Obama in their border show-down in the context of 2016:

By “win,” we mean it might boost Perry’s stature within his own party. He has forced Obama to change his plans (somewhat) and will get to put himself on the US chief executive’s level with an exchange of ideas. That’s a big step up for a possible 2016 presidential candidate whose 2012 campaign ended in a pile of “oops” during a nationally televised debate. It might help Perry appear more presidential to GOP primary voters. It will certainly help him with the conservative core, many of whom want their party to stand up to Obama, particularly on the immigration issue.

“Rick Perry two-stepped his way back into the national spotlight this week, using the crisis at the border to skewer President Barack Obama while pumping up his own conservative bona fides,” reads the top of a piece by Politico’s Katie Glueck on Wednesday. 

If anyone thought that Perry’s emergence was just accidental or momentary, think again. Perry took time out from his efforts to press for better border security to address a completely different national security issue, the emergence of ISIS in Iraq, in today’s Washington Post. And Perry not only takes on the Obama administration in this broadside, but also a potential 2016 GOP rival, Senator Rand Paul. Perry calls Paul “curiously blind” to the threat of ISIS in a clear effort to align himself against the non-interventionist wing of the Republican Party:

As a veteran, and as a governor who has supported Texas National Guard deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can understand the emotions behind isolationism. Many people are tired of war, and the urge to pull back is a natural, human reaction. Unfortunately, we live in a world where isolationist policies would only endanger our national security even further.

That’s why it’s disheartening to hear fellow Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), suggest that our nation should ignore what’s happening in Iraq. The main problem with this argument is that it means ignoring the profound threat that the group now calling itself the Islamic State poses to the United States and the world.

In the Islamic State, which came to prominence in Syria and now controls ample territory, weapons and cash in both that country and Iraq, the world is confronting an even more radicalized version of Islamic extremism than al-Qaeda. This group is well-trained, technologically sophisticated and adept at recruitment, with thousands of people with European passports fighting on its side, as well as some Americans.

This represents a real threat to our national security — to which Paul seems curiously blind — because any of these passport carriers can simply buy a plane ticket and show up in the United States without even a visa. It’s particularly chilling when you consider that one American has alreadycarried out a suicide bombing and a terrorist-trained European allegedlykilled four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

The essay rebuts a column from Paul last month, in which Paul claimed that Ronald Reagan would have never gotten entangled in Iraq in the first place:

Though many claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan on foreign policy, too few look at how he really conducted it. The Iraq war is one of the best examples of where we went wrong because we ignored that.

In 1984, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger developed the following criteria for war, primarily to avoid another Vietnam. His speech, “The Uses of Military Power,” boils down to this: The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the U.S. or its allies are involved and only “with the clear intention of winning.” U.S. combat troops should be committed only with “clearly defined political and military objectives” and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives and with a “reasonable assurance” of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress and only “as a last resort.”

Much of the rationale for going to war in 2003 did not measure up to the Weinberger Doctrine, and I opposed the Iraq war. I thought we needed to be more prudent about the weightiest decision a country can make. Like Reagan, I thought we should never be eager to go to war. And now, 11 years later, we are still dealing with the consequences.

Actually, the issue of Iraq doesn’t go back 11 years, but almost 24 years, and not to George W. Bush but to George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s successor. We have been caught up in the affairs of Iraq ever since that point, for better or worse. While Paul perhaps makes a good case for non-involvement in late 1990 — a signal sent by the Bush 41 administration at the time, which allowed Saddam Hussein to conclude that the US would not react to a forcible annexation of Kuwait — it’s a moot argument now. We are engaged in Iraq even without troops on the ground, and a full retreat from the region will not be a passive act.  It will leave a vacuum which will be filled by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and al-Qaeda and ISIS. A shrug has its consequences too, as we learned in late 1990. Absent that shrug, for which Paul argues now, we may not have spent the last 24 years in Iraq at all.

That doesn’t mean that Paul’s entirely wrong, or that Perry’s entirely right. The problem in the US isn’t that we don’t have the ability to make an impact — we clearly have that power in spades — but that we don’t have the political will to see these projects through to completion. And “completion,” in the context of the post-Versailles world, is at best a foggy concept anyway. That region isn’t Europe, after all, and even Europe didn’t fully settle its post-Versailles arrangement until after another World War, a Cold War, and the Balkans war — and may not yet be quite finished, either, especially in Kosovo. In the Middle East, it will probably take centuries to settle their post-Versailles tensions, whether or not the West remains actively engaged. If that’s depressing, welcome to the long expanse of history from the temporal vantage point.

We’re going to have this debate for a long, long time. The most interesting part of it for the moment is that Perry has decided to engage it in a public, national manner, and has deliberately taken on the Paulist wing of the GOP. That’s not the action of a man just looking to play out his string in Texas and head back to the ranch.

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Tags: 2016 election, Iraq, ISIS, Rand Paul, Rick Perry

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