Topic: GOP - Rand Paul's Presidential Highlight Reel w/ his Libertarian Twist - page 68. (Read 205829 times)

Rand Paul had screwed up, and he knew it.

It was June and the Kentucky senator was in Texas speaking to a group of tea-party activists when he got loose with his words. "Chamber of Commerce is fine, I was a member of the Chamber of Commerce," Paul told the state's Republican Liberty Caucus. "But a Chamber of Commerce Republican is not going to win a national election."

It was a bold statement for a Republican plotting his own path to presidency. Too bold, he and his advisers realized almost immediately. While Paul has nurtured an iconoclastic libertarian image—stomping across Washington in cowboy boots and jeans, casting himself as a rare Republican willing to go to Berkeley, say, or reach out to black voters—he has also methodically courted the power class here in Washington.

Slapping at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was not part of that game plan. Instead, it represented a political low in his relationship with the nation's most powerful business lobby. But by the fall, Paul wasn't swiping at the business lobby anymore; he was starring in their television ads in four Senate races, including spots to air in crucial early presidential battlegrounds of Iowa and New Hampshire. How Paul recovered from that verbal stumble and resuscitated his relationship with the chamber says a lot about the balancing—some say contortionist—act he is attempting as he readies a White House run.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Apple both seem to understand the marketplace.

Apple is betting bipartisan concern about intrusive government snooping will help sell phones, and Paul is creating a pretty impressive presidential campaign based on the same play.

Apple and Google have rolled out new default encryption technologies on their latest phones that even the companies would not be able to unlock. This means the companies would not be able to comply with court orders to turn copies of their customer's communications over to law enforcement. In what seems to be a coordinated counter, FBI Director James Comey and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton fired back about the challenge this would pose to the legitimate needs of law enforcement.

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Specifically, Paul is courting the same demographic Apple and Google aimed at with their new encrypted phones. He's looking to build a White House bid with his own new age coalition of privacy-concerned, party-non-aligned, previously non-voting, SOPA-hating, pot-tolerant youth.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) argued that the "abomination" omnibus bill was "a chance to see if electing Republicans made a difference" on Tuesday's "Laura Ingraham Show."

"I'll vote no to any kind of 2,000 page bill that I'm given at the last minute that we don't have time to read, it's an abomination, nobody should support a Congress that stuffs all the spending into one bill, nobody reads it, there are no reforms, no amendments, and it really is probably why Congress has about a 10% approval rate because this is not doing our job" he declared.

Paul added that when the GOP takes the majority it should pass separate appropriations bills, and "this will be a chance to see if electing Republicans made a difference in January and for the next nine or ten months. If Republicans actually do their job and pass every appropriation bill then I think the American people will stand up, applaud and elect more Republicans."
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Washington (AFP) - Instead of an American flag, Rand Paul wears a red penny in his lapel, symbolizing the core of the politician's philosophy: no more runaway debt, and relentless submission to the US Constitution.

"We say they've taken all our money," Paul said in 2010 shortly after his stunning Senate election. "We don't have one red cent more to send them in Washington."

The 51-year-old doctor was sent to Washington by voters furious with a system that kept swelling the national debt, and anxious over what Paul sees as government zeal for war and encroachment on American civil liberties.

With political ambitions apparently extending beyond Congress, Paul might seek to test whether he can translate his appeal to the national stage.

The senator is viewed as an early standout for the 2016 Republican presidential primaries that kick off barely one year from now.

Ahead of a probable presidential campaign launch next spring, Paul announced Tuesday he will run for Senate re-election -- allowing him to crank up his campaign team for whatever lies ahead.

Five years ago barely a handful of Tea Party ultra-conservatives had heard of the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green, Kentucky who spoke truth to power and often challenged Republican Party orthodoxy.

3. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush: Bush offered some very interesting comments this week, saying Republicans need candidates who are willing to "lose the primary to win the general, without violating your principles.” That's a nice sentiment, and few embody that approach better than Bush. But there's a reason politicians pander: because they don't like to alienate people whose votes (and money) they need. If Bush does indeed run in the primary as an unapologetic supporter of comprehensive immigration reform and Common Core, we'll see whether GOP voters reward his electability argument. Count us skeptical. (Previous ranking: 1)

2. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: Few people emerged from November's election happier than Christie. As the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, it was looking like a tough year -- even up to Election Day. But the RGA beat expectations, even picking up three governor's seats in the process and taking 32 31 of the nation's 50 states. The biggest wins were in blue states like Illinois, Maine, Maryland and Massachusetts. And, on Friday, Christie got even more good news when a Democratic-led investigation into Bridgegate showed no evidence he knew about the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. (Previous ranking: 5)

1. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul: People used to roll their eyes when we said Paul had a real chance to be the Republican nominee in 2016. No one rolls their eyes anymore. Paul has a unique activist and fundraising base thanks to his dad's two runs for president, and has shown considerable savvy in his outreach efforts to the establishment end of the party over the past few years. Paul still says odd things -- his blaming of high cigarette taxes for Eric Garner's death being the latest -- that are going to get him in trouble in the heat of a presidential race. But, Paul is the candidate furthest along in the planning process for president and the one with the most current strength in early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. (Previous ranking: 3)

The "Big picture" includes ~4,000 years of almost continuous war in the Middle East.
Rand might be politically brilliant, but is playing politics with war ever a good idea?

Before the inevitable freakout ensues, I'd like to point out what this declaration puts on the table:
1. forces the hill critters to stake out their territory and vote on actually declaring a contained war w/ an expiration date.
2. guts the behind the scenes regime change against Syria/Assad that the intelligence communities are and have been orchestrating.
3. guts/sunsets the 2001 Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) that has been used to allow the Prez to do whatever the hell he wants w/o consulting Congress and getting a formal declaration of war which has been the problem ever since.
4. considering our own intelligence community has been stoking the flames of ISIS from the get-go, it would force these so-called war hawks and surveillance staters to declare war on the CIA too and/or start a debate that they don't want.
5. w/ point #2, narrows the scope to ISIS and nobody else.

There are other points that don't exactly meet the eye but this would be a start to permanently trending declaration of wars by Congress again which are a pain in the ass which is why the MIC loves the AUMF and giving the Prez the autonomy to handle business w/o having to buy off a majority of Congress in the likely event that the public would be stirred up prior to any future war vote. I think it's a great way to control the narrative and take it away from the neocons especially by coming up w/ the terms on his own and driving a stake in the isolationist bs that they hope to use on him coming up here.

Walter Block praises Rand Paul's declaration of war bill

More...http://libertycrier.com/rand-paul-declaration-war/

Block is a Mises guy so it's nice to see at least one ancap see the big picture here instead of the usual simpleton he sold out routine by the peabrains.

Rand Paul is in the process of drafting a bill calling for a declaration of war on the part of the U.S. against ISIS. In my view, this is a magnificent development, and Senator Paul is to be highly congratulated for this brilliant initiative of his. Surprisingly, numerous libertarians have criticized him, variously, for selling out, not being enough of his father’s son, throwing libertarianism under the bus, being unprincipled, etc. Stuff and nonesense say I.

Why is it so important that the U.S. explicitly declare war? The reason is simple. If the congress must pass such a declaration before hostilities are commenced, then literally hundreds of people must approve. Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says “Congress shall have power to … declare War”. If not, and the present policy of “police actions” is continued, then one and only one person need support this, the president of the U.S. (In saying this I abstract from the possibility of his impeachment, or the disobedience of the military, as in a coup de etat.) Very likely, no, surely, we will have fewer military interventions abroad the more people who must sign onto such a policy. The last time the U.S. declared war was in 1941. Since then, there have been literally dozens if not scores of unwarranted imperialist ventures. Almost of a certainty there would have been far fewer of these unjustified actions if each of them had to pass muster by Congress as the Constitution explicitly required.

Note how embarrassing this initiative of the junior senator from Kentucky will be to the war-mongering neo-cons. On the one hand, they lust for battle (when other people and their sons take part). On the other, it will ill-behoove them to so blatantly reject the Constitution. They will be hoist by their own petard thanks to Dr. Paul.

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Over the past year-and-a-half, Sen. Rand Paul has spoken at historically black colleges, gathered with African American leaders in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown, and criticized a justice system he says unfairly targets minorities. His message is unmistakable: I’m a different kind of Republican who’s not afraid to engage with communities that typically vote for Democrats.

Yet in 2010, when he was a long-shot tea party candidate for Senate, and during his first two years in the job, Paul was rarely seen or heard from in Kentucky’s African American community, according to interviews with more than a dozen black leaders in the Bluegrass State, including seven of the eight African American state legislators. Indeed, his much-publicized courtship has occurred almost entirely as the Republican began plotting a potential run for president.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said he’d be happy to work with the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, on criminal justice reform.

“I have six different bills to reform the criminal justice system and we would welcome Hillary Clinton if she would like to come and help us promote this agenda,” he said in a Thursday interview on CNN. “I’ve been working with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats, and if she wants to join and help to support these bills I’m supporting on criminal justice, we would welcome her.”

Paul generally has few good things to say about Clinton. He refers to U.S. military action in Libya as "Hillary's war" and has questioned whether her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is a sexual predator.

I don't think this is good politics. This case was regarding someone resisting arrest and the use of force to arrest someone who was breaking the law. If the man was not resiting arrest then nothing bad (medically) would have happened to him. It has nothing to do with taxes

Rand Paul: "No Excuse" For Someone To Die Over A Cigarette Tax

Video of Rand on Hardball w/ Chris Matthews and article...http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/12/03/Rand-No-Excuse-for-Someone-to-Die-Over-a-Cigarette-Tax

Sen. Rand Paul took some heat this week for pointing out that Eric Garner was essentially executed for selling untaxed cigarettes. I’m not sure why this is a controversial thing to say (especially since Paul also explicitly said the video itself was “horrifying”). Every law, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is enforced with the threat of violence: If you fail to follow it, the state is saying it reserves the right to use violence to force you to comply and/or force you to submit to a penalty for violating the law. Every law passed also creates more opportunities for interaction with police officers, the people entrusted to use the violence necessary to enforce the laws. How a proposed law will be enforced, and potentially abused, ought to be considered in addition to the content of the law itself.
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Now, I doubt that New York city council anticipated that failure to comply with this particular law would result in a man’s death, any more than legislators in Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina, or Florida anticipated that seat belt enforcement could end in tasings, shootings, or arrests. But you enforce the laws with the police institutions you have, not the police institutions you want. Low-level offenses are a tool police sometimes use to do sweeps for outstanding warrants, or as part of a “broken windows” strategy of law enforcement. These are tactics overwhelmingly deployed on low-income and minority communities.
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It may be that the lives saved by seat belt laws and cigarette taxes are well worth the added police-citizen interactions needed to enforce them, and any incidents that might occur during those interactions. But I don’t see the harm in pointing out that these laws will result in more such interactions, or in pointing out which communities are likely to be on the receiving end of most of them.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) reacted to a grand jury's decision to not indict a New York City Police Officer in the death of Eric Garner by saying he was "horrified" by the video and blasting politicians for passing "bad laws" that "put our police in a difficult situation" in an interview broadcast on Wednesday's "Hardball" on MSNBC.

"I think it's hard not to watch that video of him saying 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe' and not be horrified by it. But I think there's something bigger than just the individual circumstances. Obviously, the individual circumstances are important. But I think it's also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes so that['s] driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say 'hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.' And for someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We've put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws" he stated.

Hillary Clinton allies are focusing on four potential Republican challengers for the White House: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Scott Walker.

Clinton World believes Paul has run the best “pre-campaign” of the group. And the fact that the Republican senator from Kentucky has worked to attract Republicans and Democrats to his cause has made him someone to watch.

Yet, time and again, Bush is the top name to roll off everyone’s tongue.

Mitch Stewart, a senior adviser to the Ready for Hillary PAC who served in key roles in both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns, acknowledged that two contenders in particular jump out to him: Walker and Paul.

“Rand Paul in a primary could be someone that excites a group of people who would not normally participate,” Stewart said.

At a Ready for Hillary fundraising event in New York two weeks ago that drew hundreds of staunch Clintonites and donors, Paul was discussed as someone Democrats needed to watch.

Paul has “demonstrated a charisma and a presence” in the lead-up to a potential run, said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who worked in the Clinton White House and attended the meeting in New York.

“To the extent that there’s been a pre-campaign winner, it’s him,” he added.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul escalated his ongoing foreign policy feud with John McCain on Monday while arguing this his non-interventionist military views are supported by a sizable amount of GOP presidential primary voters.

"I want less, McCain wants more [military intervention]," Paul said at an event sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. "He wants 15 countries more, 15 wars more. But the thing is, is that there is a more and a less argument. When you poll that in Iowa, 45 percent agreed with McCain and 41 percent agreed with me."

Paul was referencing a Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll from early October that asked:

"The Republican Party has two main views on foreign policy. Which is closer to your view—should the U.S. be quicker to intervene in conflicts overseas, as John McCain suggests, or should the U.S. pull back current military engagements to be less interventionist in foreign policy, as Rand Paul suggests?"

Paul was asked how he would deal with the possibility that his opponents and Super PACs would attack him for being weak on defense. But the Kentucky Republican said his viewpoint is gaining steam and would not necessarily be a hindrance if he runs for president in 2016.

"This is not a small movement, nor is it easy to say people like myself, who believe in less intervention, can be characterized as people who don't believe in a strong national defense," Paul said. "That is a caricature and I will have to fight that, but we'll see what happens."

McCain and Paul have sparred over the role the United States should play in the world. But the two seemed to be turning a corner recently when McCain said Paul was "evolving with experience" and told The New Yorker he would support Paul if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

In 2010, when Rachel Maddow cornered Rand Paul over his lack of support for the entire Civil Rights Act of 1964, most liberals proceeded to streak through the streets waving bloody shirts. We told you they were all racists and we were right!

The late Alexander Cockburn, at the time one of the most outspoken progressives alive, refused to join in. Though he said Paul had seemed “dumb,” he also burned Maddow for her “grandstanding.” “You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the U.S. Senate?” he asked rhetorically.

At the time Paul was locked in a Senate race with Kentucky’s Democratic attorney general Jack Conway. Cockburn called Conway “an awful neo-liberal prosecutor,” and then came this: “Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history?” The answer, of course, was Paul. It wasn’t exactly an endorsement, but it was pretty damned close.

If you’ve never read Cockburn, do yourself a favor and pick up one of his books. He was a flamboyant writer, a refreshing contrast to today’s liberal wonks who communicate in the sort of prose usually found in Sharper Image instruction manuals. Long after the sixties ended, Cockburn remained the id of the anti-authoritarian left. This meant he was often spectacularly wrong, but also that he harbored little sympathy for the Democratic Party of JFK and Johnson. Watching Rand Paul was probably cathartic for him.

Last week progressive writer H.A. Goodman made ripples when he endorsed Rand Paul over Hillary Clinton at the Huffington Post. And while most liberals haven’t gone as far as Goodman, some, especially those who remember the ethos of last century’s counterculture, have developed a muted affinity for the Kentucky senator.

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For five months, Democratic Virginia Senator Tim Kaine has been calling on Congress to assert itself in the war against ISIL. "The current crisis in Iraq, while serious and posing the possibility of a long-term threat to the United States, is not the kind of conflict where the president can or should act unilaterally," said Kaine in June. He and Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican, started working together on the contours of a new Authorization of Military Force, superseding and ending the 2002 authorization passed by a spooked, pre-election Congress.

In September, Kaine released a draft of the new authorization that repealed the 2002 AUMF and would allow the administration "to use all necessary and appropriate force to participate in a campaign of airstrikes in Iraq, and if the President deems necessary, in Syria, to degrade and defeat ISIL."
The draft stayed on the table. As recently as last week, the Kaine version of the AUMF was an idea that (many) Democrats and the White House were able to ignore.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul swooped in. He gave an interview to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, which was splashed on the newspaper's website with the headline "Rand Paul Calls for a Formal Declaration of War Against ISIS." Instead of a sleepy issue that the administration could sit on for a while, Paul made a new AUMF a subject of debate—on libertarian terms.

That was clear to anyone who read the resolutions. Kaine's began with some throat-clearing "Whereas-es" about ISIL terror, such as:
Whereas ISIL’s grisly execution of United States hostages, recruitment of United States citizens and others to serve as foreign fighters that threaten to return to the United States and other nations, and pledges to carry out additional acts of violence directly against the United States make it a threat of growing significance to the United States.

Paul's version started 200-odd years earlier.
Whereas President George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention, lectured: ''The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. Therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.'';
Whereas James Madison, father of the Constitution, elaborated in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: ''The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.'';
Whereas James Madison wrote in his Letters of Helvidius: ''In this case, the constitution has decided what shall not be deemed an executive authority; though it may not have clearly decided in every case what shall be so deemed. The declaring of war is expressly made a legislative function.''

Unlike Kaine, Paul made no mention of specific ISIL threats against the continental United States. As he's said in many speeches, Paul saw ISIL as "a clear and present danger to United States diplomatic facilities in the region." Also, as Peters first reported, Paul's version included a sunset provision to terminate the 2001, post-9/11 Authorization of Military Force against al-Qaeda and allies, "on the date that is one year after the date of the enactment of this joint resolution."

This was important. Last year, Paul told me that most of the War on Terror's over-reaches came from "a very expansive understanding of the use of the Authorization of Force in 2001." He had been trying to get Congress to officially declare the Iraq war over, and finding very few takers. Same was true for repealing the 2001 AUMF. "I think it would have absolutely no chance of going anywhere if I were to introduce it right now," he said.

Kaine's version of the AUMF remains the one with the most potential support in Congress. Paul's, unsurprisingly, is the bolder version, the one that would separate the senators who support an unending War on Terror from the ones who want to handle foreign policy threats individually. Meanwhile, there's no AUMF far enough along in the legislative process for the White House to worry about it.

"We will continue to engage with the Congress on the elements of an AUMF to ensure that they are appropriately tailored, while still preserving the authorities the President needs to execute his counter-ISIL strategy and to respond as might be necessary to defend the United States," said National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey.