Topic: GOP - Rand Paul's Presidential Highlight Reel w/ his Libertarian Twist - page 72. (Read 205829 times)

GREENVILLE, North Carolina — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has a harsh message for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and any other potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates: Support Common Core? You won’t win the presidential primary.

“I don’t see Common Core being—if you’re for Common Core and you’re for a national curriculum, I don’t see it being a winning message in a Republican primary,” Paul said in an interview backstage at an event where he endorsed Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) for reelection. “If there’s a Republican candidate out there—let’s just say there’s a hypothetical one that’s for Common Core. I’m saying that that hypothetical candidate that’s for Common Core probably doesn’t have much chance of winning in a Republican primary.”

Paul did not name Jeb Bush personally, but the former Florida governor and potential 2016 candidate has been an outspoken advocate for Common Core national educational standards. Bush was here in North Carolina on the other side of the state in late September to endorse the state House Speaker Thom Tillis’ U.S. Senate bid against incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), during which Tillis sought to distance himself from Bush’s views on both immigration and Common Core.

During the event where he endorsed Tillis, Bush pushed Common Core and immigration—two things from which Tillis distanced himself from Bush.

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Latest McClatchy-Marist 2016 GOP Primary Poll (Rand tied for 2nd)

Jeb Bush-15%
Rand Paul-13%
Paul Ryan-13%
Chris Christie-12%
Rick Perry-7%
Marco Rubio-6%
Ted Cruz-4%
Bobby Jindal-4%
Rick Santorum-3%
Scott Walker-3%
Unsure-21%

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh16rep.htm

Former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is hosting a major fundraiser for the Republican Party featuring Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) next week.

The Silicon Valley billionaire who surprisingly stepped down from the software giant last month will host the event for the National Republican Senatorial Committee at his Woodside, Calif., mansion on Oct. 8, according to an invitation obtained by BuzzFeed.

Tickets start at $1,500 per person, but run up to $32,400 for the handful of hosts.
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Thune (R-S.D.) will also be on hand, as will Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who is running for a Senate seat.

Paul is eyeing a possible presidential run in 2016 and has become a frequent visitor to Silicon Valley in recent months, where his libertarian message has won him a number of supporters, despite the region's long history as a hotbed of liberal politics.

GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) rallied 400 North Carolina pastors Tuesday evening, explaining to them why he is pro-life—an issue that, given Paul’s libertarian leanings, could be a point of attack from other conservative candidates in his likely 2016 presidential campaign.
While opening his remarks, Paul joked a bit about the awkwardness that comes with a libertarian-leaning Republican like himself being featured at a conservative Christian pastors’ event.

“People say, ‘gosh what are you doing there? What are you doing talking to a bunch of ministers? You’re a libertarian,’” Paul said. “I tell them, ‘look, I’m libertarian-ish.’ And people say, ‘well what’s that mean? Is that consistent with Christianity? Is that consistent with right and wrong?’ I think they don’t quite get it. The whole thing about sort of the people who believe in this libertarian thing is that it’s non-aggression. It isn’t religiously based, but many of us are religious. But it’s based on non-aggression. And people just say, ‘you believe in everybody doing whatever they want, license, libertine, that’s what you’re all about.’ And I say, ‘no, that’s not me at all.’”

The event at the Sheraton convention center in Greensboro brought together 400-plus politically conservative pastors from all across the state, and was hosted by the American Renewal Project. Breitbart News was the only media outlet allowed inside the closed press event during Paul’s speech, and has an exclusive look at what he talked about with the pastors.

“It’s really all about defining when life begins,” Paul said about the pro-life movement.

The Revenge of Rand Paul

The Senator has fought to go mainstream with the ideology that he shares with his father. How far can that strategy take him?

BY RYAN LIZZA

At 8 A.M. on a Friday in late July, Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, stood before a predominantly African-American audience of about a hundred at an Urban League conference in Cincinnati. An ophthalmologist before he was a senator, Paul has spent much of his career in surgical scrubs, but he was dressed nattily, in a charcoal suit and a red rep tie. His typically unkempt curls, which give him the look of a philosophy student lost in thought, were restrained with the help of a hair product. His aides had been promoting the talk for weeks, as part of a yearlong effort to reintroduce himself to political constituencies—on both the left and the right—that may have reason to distrust him. In the next few months, he is planning to deliver a major speech on foreign policy; like race, it is an area in which Paul has encountered strident opposition.

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In some respects, Paul is to Republicans in 2014 what Barack Obama was to Democrats in 2006: the Party’s most prized fund-raiser and its most discussed senator, willing to express opinions unpopular within his party, and capable of energizing younger voters. The Republican National Committee, which in 2008 refused to allow his father, Ron Paul, to speak at its Convention, recently solicited donations by offering supporters a chance to have lunch with Rand Paul. The only potential obstacle to a Paul Presidential candidacy in 2016 is his wife, Kelley. Douglas Stafford, Paul’s top political adviser, said, “Unless Kelley says no, he’s running.” Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, told me this summer, “He is objectively one of the three most likely people to get the nomination.”

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Ahead of what seems to be an increasingly likely presidential run, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will soon open an office in the San Francisco Bay Area, he said.

The Kentucky senator told The San Francisco Chronicle in an interview on Saturday that his team was “in the process of” opening the office, which would be a way to stay in touch with many of Paul's wealthy and libertarian-minded potential supporters in Silicon Valley.

"There's a lot of smart people in Silicon Valley, and we want to use their brains to figure out how to win,” he told the newspaper.

"Well, for the party, winning nationally," he added to clarify what, specifically, he wanted to win. "My goal for the past year has been to try to widen the party message and make the party big enough to win nationally."

Paul has come to the region “fairly often,” he added and has made no secret that he has drawn support from some in Silicon Valley, where his criticism of surveillance and big government has resounded.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said in a statement Tuesday that he supports military actions against ISIS—like the airstrikes President Obama just launched—but that the Constitution requires Obama to obtain congressional approval for such action.

"I support military action against ISIS but continue to believe the Constitution requires the President to receive Congressional authorization," Paul said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

President Obama did not seek congressional authorization for the strikes, which launched late Monday evening, a fact especially significant since he had sought -- and obtained -- authorization to arm Syrian rebels.
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Late Monday evening, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)—a libertarian-leaning conservative congressman—criticized President Obama for not seeking congressional authorization for these strikes and congressional leaders like Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for not fighting for Obama to seek congressional authorization.

“It's irresponsible & immoral that instead of debating & voting on war, congressional leaders chose to recess Congress for nearly two months,” Amash said via Twitter.
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Calling the president’s plan to confront ISIS “absurd,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday blasted the proposal to arm and train Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic terror group.

“It's messy,” he said in a passionate 45-minute speech on the Senate floor. “It's unclear. There are bad people on both sides. We need to stay the heck out of their civil war.”

Paul also strongly objected to the idea that the Senate will not hold a separate vote on the authorization to arm the rebels. That measure has been combined with a larger short-term spending bill meant to prevent a government shutdown.

“Sending arms to so-called moderate rebels in Syria is a fool's errand and will only make ISIS stronger," said the Kentucky Republican. "America should only go to war to win. We shouldn't go to war sort-of-meandering our way through a spending bill."

Rand Paul recently spent a couple days in New Hampshire, attending and speaking at various events. He was the headliner at the New Hampshire Republican Party Unity Breakfast, a rally at the largest university in the state, and a Generation Opportunity event in Manchester. At the GenOpp event, Rand was asked about the Free State Project. Needless to say, Rand’s answer was friendly. He associated the Free State Project with freedom and liberty, saying that was a good thing. The room cheered his answer. Then he made a joke about maybe some free staters being in the room. Rand’s father, Ron Paul, endorsed the Free State Project and event spoke at events put on by the Free State Project.

Rand Paul speaks about the Free State Project as Evan Feinberg, the Generation Opportunity President, scans the excited crowd.

A couple days after Rand left New Hampshire, a new CNN poll about the 2016 New Hampshire Republican Primary came out. The poll shows Rand leading his nearest Republican competitor by 50%. He leads the Republican field with Independents by over 100%. Rand also leads the field with conservatives and people that attended college.

By Eric Bolling

Liberals are worried…. (and they should be). You can smell it in the air, the conservative wave is around the corner.

The liberal media and the Democratic National Committee are up in arms against several of the GOP's top candidates.

Monday, a Washington Post hatchet piece attacked the leading Liberty Conservative in politics: Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

To my conservative friends, who believe every bad story written, even about their own allies, please think twice and proceed with caution.

Most of us know that the appearance of conservative hit pieces escalates as the left perceives the threat level. It appears, the threat level is flashing big and red.

Conservatives like Rand Paul are serious. They are getting the message across, that conservative and libertarian ideas are a threat to the Big Government left.

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CNN/ORC

Huckabee: 21%
Ryan: 12%
Paul: 7%
Bush: 6%
Christie: 6%
Perry: 5%
Walker: 5%
Rubio: 5%
Cruz: 4%
Jindal: 4%
Santorum: 3%

BASED ON 383 REGISTERED REPUBLICANS AND REGISTERED INDEPENDENTS WHO SAY
THEY WILL VOTE IN THE 2016 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY -- SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5
PERCENTAGE PTS.

5. Thinking ahead to the 2016 presidential election, if the Republican presidential primary were
held today, please tell me which of the following people you would be most likely to support.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Texas Senator Ted
Cruz, Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Kentucky
Senator Rand Paul, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Florida Senator
Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum,
or Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. (RANDOM ORDER.)


Sept. 8-11, 2014

Paul.......15%
Bush.......10%
Ryan.......10%
Christie....9%
Huckabee....9%
Perry.......7%
Rubio.......7%
Walker......7%
Cruz........6%
Jindal......3%
Santorum....3%
Pence *
Someone else (vol.) 3%
None/No one (vol.) 4%
No opinion 7%

There is very little chance of Rand Paul winning the race. Even if he is ahead, the other "mainstream" Republicans such as Bush and Huckabee would gang-up together to defeat him.

There is also positive movement in the corridors of power here in the US. This morning in Washington we had a highly productive meeting with Senator Rand Paul, who has been taking huge steps forward in building bipartisan support for sensible, humane drug policies. Later, we enjoyed a livestreamed debate on why it is Time to Rethink Global Drug Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Online, masses of people have been getting in touch to pledge their support.

The Secret to Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy: His Father
If you want a real insight into how Rand Paul truly views the world, check out his dad’s record in Congress during the Cold War.

W. James Antle III


Rand Paul is struggling to demonstrate that a presidential candidate can be skeptical of military adventures while still being tough on foreign enemies when necessary. And so far, all he is getting for his trouble is charges of flip-flopping.

Is there any recent precedent for a reluctant but strong warrior in Republican politics? Paul has been citing Ronald Reagan, but there is another, and perhaps more surprising, model: Ron Paul, the Kentucky senator’s own father.

This may seem counterintuitive. While the elder Paul’s two Republican presidential campaigns put noninterventionism back on the political map, his rhetoric is often a textbook example of how not to sell such foreign-policy ideas to the wider GOP base.

Ron Paul’s first stints as a Republican congressman from Texas were during the 1970s and ‘80s, however. As a libertarian-leaning lawmaker, he frequently disagreed with his GOP colleagues on foreign policy back then too. But, unlike some more militant libertarian thinkers, Ron Paul never dismissed the threat of communism during the Cold War.

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