Topic: GOP - Rand Paul's Presidential Highlight Reel w/ his Libertarian Twist - page 67. (Read 205829 times)

Rand Paul, 51, is a Republican senator from Kentucky. He is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate for 2016.

I’m not going to ask you if you’re going to run for president.

Good.

I’ll let the pros handle that question. Do you think most Americans have a good sense of who you are?

Most Americans have a vague notion of who different politicians are. People who live in your state who have met you and interacted with you probably have a little more understanding of who you are. We do get a general understanding seeing people on television. The longer the interview, the more detailed, the better chance people have of knowing who you are.
 
Time magazine called you one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Is Time right?
That’s a difficult question for someone to answer about themselves. That’s somebody else assessing it, so it would be presumptuous to say, “Hey, I’m the most interesting person in Washington.” Self-analysis or talking about yourself is a difficult thing to accomplish with any sense of decency about it.

What do you miss most about being a full-time ophthalmologist?
The interaction with folks and seeing the smile on someone’s face as they sit up and say, “I can see again.” I was able to revisit some of that in Guatemala over the summer, and it truly is priceless. It’s also: You have a problem, you diagnose it and you fix it. Whereas in politics we’re still debating half the time over what the problem is. We can’t even agree on the problem, much less the solution.

Everybody runs against Washington. What do you really like about Washington?
Of the things in the Senate that probably excite me more than anything else, it’s engaging in a debate over where power should reside and over the restraint of power. I’m able to stand up on the floor and ask a question. Does the president have the ability to drone an American citizen not involved in combat? Does the president have the right to incarcerate someone forever without an attorney? Discussing and trying to defend the liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and knowing that I can stand on the same floor as Henry Clay or Daniel Webster or discuss the same issues that James Madison discussed, and Thomas Jefferson, to me that’s sort of phenomenal for a guy who, four years ago, was a small-town physician.

Who is more of an establishment Republican, you or Ted Cruz?
I don’t think it’s really my role to figure stuff like that out.

Is there anyone your dad would vote for over you in a presidential election?
That one I think I can answer. No.

Peter Lawler has wondered if maybe Rand Paul will be tough to beat for the Republican nomination. Paul is well positioned to inherit his father’s voting base, but his father’s voting base was not nearly large enough to be a real threat to win the Republican nomination.

There are several factors that make Rand a potentially more formidable candidate than his father. He doesn’t come across as a fanatic and a sectarian. He has a chance to reach beyond his father’s voting base to conservative voters who are frustrated with the establishment and don’t see anyone else who is standing up to the GOP’s Washington elites.

Paul is also helped by the peculiar dynamics of 2016. Ted Cruz could conceivably challenge Rand Paul for the party’s anti-establishment voters but, as Henry Olsen has pointed out, Cruz actually has a pretty narrow path to the nomination and could get taken out early in Iowa by Ben Carson. It is quite possible that Rand Paul could emerge from Iowa and New Hampshire as the only breathing alternative to the establishment candidates. Rand Paul could end up being both the Ron Paul of 2016 and the Rick Santorum of 2016. It is also possible that the Republican establishment will fail to coalesce around one candidate and that the establishment Republican vote will either split several ways going into South Carolina and/or the establishment candidates will bankrupt and destroy each other in the course of pursuing their ambitions.

That is a lot of ifs. My best guess is that the most likely scenario is one where Paul finishes a very strong second (think Clinton in 2008 rather than Santorum in 2012) to the surviving establishment candidate.

I just wish that the GOP establishment was less of an arm of the Washington business lobbies and that Tom Cotton had a few more years in the Senate.

Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and even Scott Walker have denounced the U.S. thaw in relations with Cuba, but Rand Paul is breaking with the GOP pack:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that starting to trade with Cuba "is probably a good idea" and that the lengthy economic embargo against the communist island "just hasn't worked."

Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to try to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba....

"The 50-year embargo just hasn't worked," Paul said. "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship...."

Here's the key point, I think:

He also said many U.S. farmers would back Obama's moves because the country is a new market for their crops.

Rand Paul really, really wants to win Iowa, and, as Peter Baker noted in The New York Times today, the Obama policy shift is backed by "major agricultural interests."

And if you look at the local press, you get the impression that it's backed by Iowa agricultural interests. Here's a story about the policy change from the Ottumwa Courier:

... Bob Bowman said Iowa farmers stand to benefit, along with several other Iowa industries. And Bowman should know. He's a DeWitt farmer, chairman of the Iowa Corn Promotion board and serves on the Corn Board of the National Corn Grower's Association. He also has firsthand experience in Cuba.

"I was down there about five years ago along with Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey. They were begging us to expand trade. We couldn't do that because of some of the restrictions our government placed on trade," Bowman said. "This announcement, I'm excited. Iowa Corn is excited."

It's not just Bowman who is excited. Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, released a statement saying the bureau supports the decision to normalize relations.

"Improving trade relations between the U.S. and Cuba will expand access to a market of 11 million consumers for U.S. agriculture. That's good for Cuba and good for America, too. We look forward to working closely with the administration on this issue."

Why do farmers stand to gain so much? Cuba imports a large percentage of its food. That includes food from the U.S., which was allowed after some loosening of restrictions more than a decade ago....

Also, the Business Record has this editorial, written just before the Obama announcement, by Jay Byers and Gene Meyer, respectively the CEO and president of the Greater Des Moines Partnership:

Guest Opinion: Time to lift the Cuba trade embargo

In late October, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, in conjunction with the Ankeny Area Chamber of Commerce and the Urbandale Chamber of Commerce, led a group of 70 Central Iowans on a cultural exploration mission to Cuba.... During the trip, participants were able to observe the Cuban economy firsthand, meet with the Cuban people and learn more about the recently implemented economic reforms. The trip was the latest activity in Partnership efforts dating back almost 15 years to ease travel and trade restrictions with Cuba....

There is no doubt that Cuba's poverty is the direct result of a half century of failed Marxist economic policies. However, the embargo has allowed the Castro regime to blame its problems on Washington, D.C. The U.S. represents a natural trading partner for Cuba and its 11.2 million residents, located just 90 miles from our shores. Due to the embargo, American farmers and businesses have missed out on significant economic opportunities....

Continuing to maintain a trade policy with Cuba based on an antiquated Cold War dispute no longer makes any sense. Ending the embargo would remove Cuba’s excuse for economic failure, help promote a transition to democracy and a free market economy in Cuba, improve the lives of the Cuban people and bring significant economic opportunities to American farmers and businesses.

The time for change is long overdue.

I don't know about the political affiliation of the other guys named above, but Iowa's agriculture secretary, Bill Northey, is a Republican; as noted, he led an agricultural delegation to Cuba a few years ago.

Farmers want to do business with Cuba, more than they want to cling to Cold War-era ideological purity. So I think, at least with regard to Iowa, Rand Paul is making a very smart move.

Rand Paul knocks out Marco Rubio like Ali over Foreman



More...http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/22/rand-paul-knocks-out-marco-rubio-like-ali-over-for/

The rest of that article is really enlightening and not just a puff piece on Rand. Great historical context is presented.

Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, has delivered a knock out punch against Sen. Marco Rubio to normalization of relations with Cuba to benefit the United States. The punch was as decisive as Muhammad Ali’s knock out of George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle 40 years ago. Mr. Rubio’s presidential ambitions are over.

The Florida senator’s implacable hatred of Fidel Castro and Cuba’s Communist regime has driven him to anti-democratic tirades and to a policy of Cuban ostracism that sneers at Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  His child-like immaturity and conflicting loyalties between Cuba and the United States disqualify him for the White House.

Mr. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who fled under the dictatorship of Fulgencia Batista.  He has apparently forgotten that as a U.S. citizen and senator, his sole allegiance is to the U.S. Constitution and to the general welfare of the people of the United States. If there is a conflict between Mr. Rubio’s sympathies for the Cuban people and the best interests of the United States, he is required to abandon the former in favor of the latter.

The United States forged an alliance with Joseph Stalin during World War II to advance the interests of the United States, not to advance the cause of human rights or democracy in the Soviet Union.

Next year, Sen. Rand Paul will reintroduce a bill that goes after the federal programs that send military-grade equipment to local police departments, staff for the Kentucky Republican told BuzzFeed News.

Paul’s decision to keep bill, which was crafted by the retiring Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, alive will be a significant test for the political viability of the issue. Paul will be trying to force a Republican-controlled Senate to examine federal programs that funnel millions in grant money and surplus to arm local police forces with weapons and vehicles designed for the battlefield. Paul’s expected presidential run, which will likely launch next year, could put the issue back on the national agenda as well.

Coburn’s bill — which is very similar to legislation Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia has vowed to reintroduce in the House next Congress — targets a small fraction of the millions of dollars worth of military surplus shipped by the Pentagon to local law enforcement each year under the Defense Department’s so-called 1033 program. Most of the surplus equipment is mundane — office furniture, uniforms, etc. But the most controversial 1033 shipments see vehicles and weapons used by the U.S. armed forces sent to local police. Coburn’s bill would ban that practice while keeping the non-lethal surplus flowing.

The Republican response to President Barack Obama's historic opening toward Cuba this week has generally been awful and dispiriting to behold. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, was the politician most single-handedly responsible for the United States re-establishing diplomatic relations with still-communist Vietnam two decades ago, saying at the time:

"Instead of vainly trying to isolate Vietnam, the United States should test the proposition that greater exposure to Americans will render Vietnam more susceptible to the influence of our values. Vietnam's human rights record needs substantial improvement. We should make good use of better relations with the Vietnamese to help advance in that country a decent respect for the rights of man."

What does McMaverick say now, with his co-conspirator Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)?

"It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs, and adversaries, diminishing America's influence in the world."

The gap in both the writing and sentiment in those two passages speaks volumes about how far GOP foreign-policy thinking has degenerated over time. (It also speaks to McCain's own 100% malleability on key issues—back in 2000 he said "I'm not in favor of sticking my finger in the eye of Fidel Castro. In fact, I would favor a road map towards normalization of relations such as we presented to the Vietnamese and led to a normalization of relations between our two countries.")

Two senatorial exceptions to that rule have been Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has long advocated lifting the U.S. embargo, telling Reason TV in 2011 that "If someone's going to limit my travel, it should be a communist, not my own government”; and also Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who came out in qualified support of Obama's actions yesterday.
...
But Rubio and the GOP are wrong, and wildly so, about a number of their Obama-Cuba critiques. This move was not "appeasement"; increased American travel and remittances do not "only" serve "to benefit the regime," and this does not mark a retreat from fighting for the freedom of Cubans.
...
But how, precisely, is this appeasement? The U.S. got one of its longtime intelligence operatives, plus an innocent-seeming human rights activist, out of Cuban prisons in exchange for three genuinely awful Cuban spies whose work was linked to the death of Americans. Now, that two-for-three swap is certainly unequal, and may indeed (as Rubio worries) incentivize bad actors to take innocent Americans hostage in the future, but as Israel for one can certainly testify, sometimes countries that genuinely value their own citizens' lives accept numerically and morally disproportionate prisoner exchanges. Frustrating, yes, but not definitionally appeasement. Should Reagan have left Nick Daniloff rot in Soviet prison just because he, too, was most likely a hostage?
...
Rubio, to my knowledge, has never visited Cuba outside of the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay facility. My 1998 experience of attempting to live in Havana convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that three of the most important and attainable things Cubans need, both for their basic human dignity and for their struggle against their totalitarian overlords, are 1) exposure to Americans; 2) increased access to non-governmental sources of money, and 3) increased access to information. Obama's moves help on all three fronts.
...
Once upon a time, "appeasement" meant ceding the Sudetenland to an expansionist Adolf Hitler without even allowing Czechs a seat at the negotiating table. Now it somehow means a two-for-three prisoner swap, a slight easing on unconscionable restrictions against Americans, promises of 53 political prisoners being freed, the same diplomatic engagement the U.S. has had with Venezuela since 1835, and a net increase in individual Cuban latitude? Republicans not named Paul or Flake (or Amash) may want to start rethinking their hyperbole. Sadly, there's little reason to believe that they will.
...

Senator Marco Rubio believes the embargo against Cuba has been ineffective, yet he wants to continue perpetuating failed policies. After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach? The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. Why not Cuba? I am a proponent of peace through commerce, and I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change.

Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism. Finally, let's be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the latest potential presidential candidate to weigh in on policy changes to Cuba and the libertarian leaning Republican's position splits from other Republicans who are also considering a presidential run.
Paul told Tom Roten of News Talk 800 in West Virginia that the 50-year embargo "just hasn't worked" and normalizing relations with the island nation is "probably a good idea."



"If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship," he said.
Potential challengers, Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of Florida, denounced President Barack Obama's decision to open diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also slammed the deal.
Bush called it a "misstep" that "undermines America's credibility and undermines the quest for a free and democratic Cuba."
And Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, vowed to use his role as incoming chairman of a Foreign Relations subcommittee to block progress on policy.
"The White House has conceded everything," Rubio said, calling the policy "disgraceful."
Paul, who has often bumps heads with members of his party over foreign policy, expressed a similar position to another potential presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
"Despite good intentions, our decades-long policy of isolation has only strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power," Clinton said in a statement. "As I have said, the best way to bring change to Cuba is to expose its people to the values, information, and material comforts of the outside world."

Libertarian values are at the core of Constitutional conservative realism.  Applying those values to the real world is a tricky matter, and no two intelligent Libertarians precisely agree on exactly which implementations are proper.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/12/08/the-conservative-realist

^^^I think Rand gets it just about right, and as a side benefit invites disgruntled PaleoRealist Condi to join his team.

/three Libertarians - four opinions   

Hillary? Ugh, gag me with a spoon. If you want libertarian values, you have to vote for a libertarian. Anyone the Republicans endorse is automatically disqualified for having the same old ties that will require him to make the same old concessions and be indebted to the same old special interests. Obama was an electable change from the same-old when he was a candidate too (the first time), and look how different he turned out to be. Rand is a better option that someone like Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, but he's still not the best option if you're a libertarian. Gary Johnson will get my vote again.

Rand was raised discussing issues and philosophy with his father, plus campaigning for national offices.

That's not "the same as every other politician in DC."  He grew up learning exactly what must be done in order to take the baton from his dad and carry it towards finish line.

More of the same isn't going to cut it.  He's a son of RP, not a clone.  If you can't accept that, you are Ready For Hillary.   

Ready For Hillary?
Ready for Hillary to be too old and sick to run! Despite her past "sins", Ms. Clinton will probably win due to the huge numbers of women who want Any Woman to win. Does Rand have a realistic chance even if he is able to win the nomination?

Sen. Rand Paul on ISIS, the Middle East, and when America should go to war

Matt Welch from the January 2015 issue

On October 23, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gave a major foreign policy address at the Center for the National Interest in which he declared himself a "conservative realist," aligning himself with the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Caspar Weinberger. (See "The Case for Conservative Realism.") As he did in a similar February 2013 speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the libertarian-leaning 2016 GOP presidential contender attempted to sell his foreign policy vision to fellow Republicans as a middle path between the near-absolute anti-intervention of his (unmentioned) father and the hyper-interventionism of the Washington Republican establishment.

Reaction to the speech varied widely. Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who has long advocated a less interventionist foreign policy, told reporters "I think I just heard Ronald Reagan speaking." The lefty analysis site Vox enthused that "Rand Paul just gave one of the most important foreign policy speeches in decades" because he "declared war on his own party." The Hill described the address as "anti-isolationist," while neoconservative Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin scoffed that Paul was "still pretending he's not an isolationist." And so on.

Rand was raised discussing issues and philosophy with his father, plus campaigning for national offices.

That's not "the same as every other politician in DC."  He grew up learning exactly what must be done in order to take the baton from his dad and carry it towards finish line.

More of the same isn't going to cut it.  He's a son of RP, not a clone.  If you can't accept that, you are Ready For Hillary.   

Its all been built out using NationBuilder so people can do phone banking, post blogs, create walk lists, manage events, recruit members, fundraise, send e-mails... All through the site.

To me, this is a sad reminder that Rand Paul's image as a libertarian is just an image. He's the same as every other politician in DC. One who makes the connections with and concessions to special interests in order to be electable, and often to the detriment to the people he's supposed to serve: the public.

The Courtship: How Rand Paul Became a 'Chamber Republican'

More...http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-courtship-how-rand-paul-became-a-chamber-republican-20141214