Ready for Rand Yet?

Rand Paul’s admirers, and more than a few of his enemies, believe the country is having a “libertarian moment”—from Tea Partiers in Topeka to Silicon Valley techno-separatists who dream of going Galt. We’ve had these moments before, but each time they come and go without the elevation of a libertarian to high office or the advancement of libertarian ideas. There’s a reason for that, and Sen. Rand Paul is just learning why now.

The problem for libertarian politicians is that Americans hate libertarianism. They like Social Security and minimum-wage hikes, they are still somewhat wary of free trade and they resent that the world is full of conniving and frequently swarthy foreigners who are scheming to provide us with goods and services in exchange for little green pieces of paper. Four times as many Americans support pulling out of NAFTA or renegotiating it as support staying in. Paul, on the other hand, wants to make the whole world a free-trade zone: He scores 100 percent on the libertarian Cato Institute’s free-trade index. Libertarian ideas might appeal to voters on principle—in a poll last fall, 22 percent of Americans said they identify as or “lean” libertarian. But in the voting booth Americans don’t have principles; they have interests.

Nearly every election cycle, a poll comes out suggesting that many Americans, and a big chunk of swing voters, think of themselves as “fiscally conservative but socially liberal,” and therefore possibly open to libertarian candidates who want to police the deficit but not your sex life. These voters are the political equivalent of people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” It’s basically an empty formulation to avoid picking a side or a fight; it’s shallow, but it sounds good. The problem, at least for Rand Paul, is that “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” is not a long way of saying “libertarian.” Paul’s libertarianism is intended to offer a little something for everybody, on the left and right—spending cuts for the Republican base, legal relief for potheads, a presidential pat on the head for gay people. But if he gets serious about substantive reform along these lines, his libertarianism is instead going to offer something to outrage everybody.

Start with the so-called fiscal conservatives. Spend a few hours listening to second-tier talk radio or engage with some real-life American voters for a few hours, and you will discover that there is practically no market for fiscal conservatism. Ask them how they think we should go about balancing the budget, for instance, and they’ll inevitably respond: by cutting foreign aid, which American voters believe makes up about a third of the federal budget. Rand Paul’s repeated calls to end foreign aid—to Egypt, to countries where the American flag is burned, to anybody else he can think of—is a reliable applause line for the gentleman from Kentucky; giving away aid is just one more of those foreign entanglements George Washington warned us about. But what many of his admirers do not understand is that his opposition to foreign aid isn’t principally fiscal but ideological: Foreign aid’s portion of the budget is actually miniscule—closer to 1 percent. Even if we cut it all, the savings would be trivial.


When it comes to balancing the budget, Paul is more likely to cut off aid to your mom. That’s where the money is. We spend almost all of the federal budget on a handful of programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and defense. So any plausible, politically sustainable campaign to impose some sanity on America’s national finances is going to mean reforming—i.e., cutting—all of those. How unpopular is that? Solid majorities of Americans oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and raising taxes to pay for them, even though a larger majority also believes that the cost of those programs will create economic problems. The number of people who think we spend too much on the military hasn’t topped the 50-percent mark since the Vietnam War. Think about George W. Bush’s attempt at Social Security reform, which left him the loneliest man in Washington. Or consider that in 2012, fiscal conservative wonk-emperor Paul Ryan ran for the vice presidency on a campaign that blasted the Obama administration for making Medicare cuts. Which is to say, even the man in Washington most associated with the words “fiscal conservative” knows better than to run as one. Fiscal conservatives might applaud Rand Paul when he talks about getting Afghan President Hamid Karzai off of welfare, but they’ll scream if he comes within five miles of their Social Security checks. Any candidate who’s serious about fiscal reform is going to be a hard sell in 2016—or any other year.

If the fair-weather fiscal conservatives don’t like Rand Paul, the phony social liberals are going to loathe him. Here’s where the English language fails us: “Liberal” and “libertarian” come from the same linguistic root, meaning “liberty,” and many libertarians will describe themselves among friends as “classical liberals”—political heirs to the Whigs and the Manchester free-traders. But “socially liberal” and “socially libertarian” today mean almost precisely opposite things. If there is one thing our “social liberals” hate, it is liberty. In their view, you’re free to do as they please.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...-hates-liberterians-104858.html#ixzz2wmM57XBr

 

On Foreign Policy :

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If the Crimea crisis has revealed flaws in President Barack Obama’s passive “realism,” it has also exposed the utter incoherence of Rand Paul’s foreign policy—which, despite a reputation for being principled and bold, is in fact all over the place.

If that sounds too harsh, try making sense of the Kentucky senator’s contorted response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Paul, the latest favorite for the GOP’s 2016 presidential candidate, came out blasting in a recent Time op-ed, declaring that Russian President Vladimir Putin “must be punished” for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and asserting that Obama isn’t up to the job. “If I were president, I wouldn’t let Vladimir Putin get away with it,” Paul huffed.

Such gasconade seemed out of character for the anti-war libertarian. He opposes U.S. intervention just about everywhere—whether in Syria, which he sees as an invitation to another Iraq-style quagmire, or Iran, where he rejects preemptive U.S. strikes in favor of diplomacy or, failing that, a containment policy. Sure enough, the day after his Time article appeared, Paul was back to his usual dovish tone. In a Brietbart op-ed, he prescribed the “strategic use of soft power” to counter Putin and accused unnamed politicians—clearly his GOP presidential rivals—of beating their chests: “What we don’t need right now is politicians who have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers.” Those who invoke Ronald Reagan to justify their bellicosity, he added, should remember that some similarly overzealous hawks called the Gipper an appeaser for negotiating nuclear arms accords with Soviet leaders.

Confused?

Let’s step back to January 2011, when the ophthalmologist-turned-politician Paul rode the high tide of Tea Party insurgency into the U.S. Senate. Despite having zero international experience, he was nothing if not clear and consistent on foreign policy. Like his father and libertarian icon, the now-retired Texas congressman Ron Paul, Rand called for America to mind its own business instead of trying to solve other countries’ problems. He regularly excoriated GOP neoconservatives for having pushed the nation into protracted and costly wars during the Bush administration, and made no secret of his desire to get America out of the superpower business.

Paul traced what he regards as America’s biggest problems—massive debts at home and chronic overreaching abroad—to the same source: unchecked government power. To encourage Washington to resist imperial temptations and exercise more restraint in foreign affairs, he introduced legislation soon after being sworn in to cut defense spending and reduce U.S. bases and troops stationed overseas. “When we’re short of money, when we can’t do the things we need to do in our country, we certainly shouldn’t be shipping the money overseas,” Paul told CNN in a January 2011 interview, in which the neophyte lawmaker also called for cutting all foreign aid, including to Israel. Needless to say, Paul’s bid to scale back U.S. global leadership did not impress his fellow Republicans, and died a quick death in the Senate.


But that didn’t stop him. In the spring of 2011, Paul opposed Obama’s decision to help enforce a “no-fly” zone in Libya. Paul saw no national interest at stake in the popular uprising against dictator Moammar Qadhafi and accused the administration of usurping Congress’s constitutional power to authorize the use of force. Paul’s punctilious adherence to the principle of non-interference—strenuously defended in the U.N. Security Council by autocratic powers like China and, ironically, Russia, at least until Putin muscled his way into Ukraine’s affairs—has led many observers to dub Paul a neo-isolationist. This he emphatically denies, but there’s no question he wants to rein in what he sees as Washington’s manic activism abroad. As he explained to the Heritage Foundation in February of last year, such restraint is “the true conservative foreign policy, as it includes two basic tenets of true conservatism: respect for the constitution and fiscal discipline.”

About a month after making those remarks came Paul’s breakout moment, when he staged a 13-hour filibuster on the Senate floor to protest John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director and the Obama administration’s use of drones, including against Americans. For the soft-spoken former doctor, it was a passionate performance:

“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. That Americans could be killed in a café in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is an abomination.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...reign-policy-muddle-104852.html#ixzz2wmTKFZOF

 

Rand Paul needs to run as a republican. Then, when he kicks the shit out of pile of trash Hillary, and becomes President, yes, he can change his R to L.
And yes, Hillary should be in prison right now for her role in Benghazi! That's just Benghazi, not to mention every other FELONY she's committed, and gotten away with!

 

On Republicans :

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(CNN) – Rand Paul put a new spin on a familiar refrain that the Republican Party needs to broaden its base. He compared the GOP's need for change to a recent Domino's Pizza's campaign to improve the taste of its crust.

The Kentucky senator and potential 2016 presidential candidate told a packed crowd of students at the University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday that "the Republican Party needs to either evolve, adapt or die."

"Remember when Domino’s finally admitted they had bad crust? Think Republican Party. Admit it; bad crust. We need a different kind of party," he said referring to a well-known advertising campaign by the pizza chain.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/19/rand-paul-gop-like-bad-pizza-crust/?hpt=hp_t2

 

Sure, there are inconsistencies in some of Paul's positions. Some of his policies are controversial with some. So what? What's the alternative? Jeb Bush? Hillary? She has all the answers? If the choice is Paul or a return to the Clinton/Bush dynasty of corruption and failure, I take Paul.

I prefer Ted Cruz to Paul, but he is asking questions no one else is, and he has appeal that no other republican has.