Will Rand Paul's movement build the broad movement for liberty?Three Questions About Rand Paul
How his presidential campaign can help or hurt the cause of libertyIt doesn't lead through Iowa and New Hampshire.Paramount PicturesI do not expect Rand Paul to win his party's presidential nomination this time around. I also live in a state where you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the GOP primary, so I'm not going to be in a position to cast a ballot for or against him next year anyway—not unless he defies my expectations and becomes the nominee. And I don't have tremendous faith that even a well-meaning president, should such a beast exist, can tame a vast and entrenched system of power.
So the question Would we be better off with Rand Paul as president? isn't particularly important to me right now. I'm more interested in three other issues:
1. What will Rand Paul the presidential candidate do to Rand Paul the senator? It'll be a few more months before we know this for sure, but it looks like Paul won't have to give up his Senate seat to run for president. That's good: Despite Paul's steps closer to the conventional right, he's still miles preferable to pretty much anyone likely to replace him. But in the meantime, Paul's drift toward Hannityville is bound to be reflected in how he votes, what bills he introduces, and, in general, where he chooses to take a stand.
Valuable though it may be to imagine what Paul could do if he's elected president, I spend more time thinking about what he can do with the office he has now. The Senate is a place where just one or two people can put the brakes on a terrible idea—as Paul reportedly did in 2011 by blocking a move toward bringing Georgia into NATO. It will be a shame if Paul's presidential ambitions make him less willing to exercise his power in such ways.
The flipside is that those ambitions may have made him more likely to make big pushes on the issues where he isn't folding. Right now it looks like he's standing by his deviations from GOP orthodoxy on criminal justice. Can that make up for his meeker positions on foreign policy?
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/21/three-questions-about-rand-paul#.fbhsto:qTRr