Topic: GOP - Rand Paul's Presidential Highlight Reel w/ his Libertarian Twist - page 74. (Read 205829 times)

Bribing election officials would.

btw, there's also news of the ron paul scandal affecting rand.. i'm not quite sure how fair it is to label rand guilty by association, but that's the way it works i guess.

turns out ron paul was willing to "buy" endorsements, which to me, makes him the same as every other politician.

Some pundits are surprised that I support destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militarily. They shouldn’t be. I’ve said since I began public life that I am not an isolationist, nor am I an interventionist. I look at the world, and consider war, realistically and constitutionally.

I still see war as the last resort. But I agree with Reagan’s idea that no country should mistake U.S. reluctance for war for a lack of resolve.

As Commander-in-Chief, I would not allow our enemies to kill our citizens or our ambassadors. “Peace through Strength” only works if you have and show strength.

Our recent foreign policy has allowed radical jihadists to proliferate. Today, there are more terrorists groups than there were before 9/11, most notably ISIS. After all the sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, why do we find ourselves in a more dangerous world?

And why, after six years, does President Obama lack a strategy to deal with threats like ISIS?

This administration’s dereliction of duty has both sins of action and inaction, which is what happens when you are flailing around wildly, without careful strategic thinking.

And while my predisposition is to less intervention, I do support intervention when our vital interests are threatened.

If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS. I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess.

This is what President Obama should have done. He should have been prepared with a strategic vision, a plan for victory and extricating ourselves. He should have asked for authorization for military action and would have, no doubt, received it.

Once we have decided that we have an enemy that requires destruction, we must have a comprehensive strategy—a realistic policy applying military power and skilful diplomacy to protect our national interests.

The immediate challenge is to define the national interest to determine the form of intervention we might pursue. I was repeatedly asked if I supported airstrikes. I do—if it makes sense as part of a larger strategy.

I recently returned from a medical mission to Guatemala organized by the John Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah.

My first connection with Guatemala was in the 1990's.

I met the Hernandez brothers when they were kids. They were led into the examining room by their foster mother.  Though they were blind, both boys still worked together to bring water from the river for their family in a small village in Guatemala.

During the week over 200 patients, many of them blind with cataracts, had their vision restored.
I met them because of the humanitarian work of Bill and Judy Schwank. Bill was born in Guatemala and came to the U.S. to practice neurosurgery.  His wife, Judy, is an attorney and longtime advocate for adoption.

They brought Juan and Andres Hernandez to me in 1999 to see if I could restore any of their vision. Juan was 8 and Andres 14. 

On examination, I found that they had mature cataracts.  Juan could see hand motion and Andres light perception only.  I explained that the vision center in the brain must be stimulated before age of 7 or vision isn't possible-- even if the cataracts are removed. Our hope was that the cataracts were not mature at birth and that the boys had some vision at an early age.

I performed their cataract surgery in Bowling Green, Ky. The Schwanks raised and contributed the money necessary to bring the brothers to the United States.

I remember them well because the boys had never before seen running water and they somehow stopped the drain and left the water running-- a mini-disaster for the foster family.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) raised eyebrows this weekend when he endorsed one of the most hawkish positions toward the Islamic State militants currently wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

"If I were president, I would call a joint session of Congress," Paul told the AP. "I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily."

That put the self-professed non-interventionist to the right of many of his fellow presidential hopefuls, who sounded more tentative notes when asked about the proper U.S. response. Seeking to "destroy ISIS militarily" would require some sort of ground presence in the region, and involve far greater American involvement in another Middle East conflict.

But during an interview on Sean Hannity's radio show on Wednesday, Paul sought to clarify that position. The libertarian-leaning senator said that Iran, Syria, and Turkey could be “enjoined” in fighting Islamic State militants because of their proximity and interest in the region.

“Right now, the two allies that have the same goal would be Iran and Syria, to wipe out ISIS. They also have the means and the ability and they also have the incentive to do so because Assad’s clinging for power and clinging for life there,” Paul said, as quoted by BuzzFeed.

The possible presidential contender also said that while the U.S. can provide air support, other nations should ultimately take the lead in rooting out Islamic State militants on the ground.

“So I also think that Turks really should be enjoined in this. And I do think that there can be a role for America. But I would rather see the president come to a joint session of Congress, [ask] for permission, and if he gets it, I still would like to see the ground troops and the battles being fought by those who live there. We can give both technological as well as air support. That could be the decisive factor in this," Paul said.

While President Barack Obama promised Wednesday to "degrade and destroy” the extremist group after they beheaded a second American journalist, he has held off on escalating U.S. airstrikes outside a small area of Iraq. It's unclear from Paul's remarks, however, whether he supports going after ISIS in its haven in Syria.

Paul's proposed path to intervention has complicated recent attacks he has levied against members of both parties, including a key contrast he has tried to make between himself and other prospective 2016 challengers. After he initially made the case against U.S. intervention in Iraq in June, Paul expressed "mixed feelings" about airstrikes later that month. He then followed up by criticizing "war hawks" like Hillary Clinton, only to advocate for war himself two days later.

DNC Response to Rand Paul’s Troubling WSJ Op-Ed

This morning, Rand Paul ran an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where he laid out his troubling foreign policy worldview.

Below please find a response from DNC National Press Secretary Michael Czin to Paul’s vision:

“It’s disappointing that Rand Paul, as a Senator and a potential presidential candidate, blames America for all the problems in the world, while offering reckless ideas that would only alienate us from the global community.

“Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Paul. Last week he criticized American policy to the president of another country on foreign soil. This week he’s blaming the Obama Administration for another nation’s civil war. That type of “blame America” rhetoric may win Paul accolades at a conference of isolationists but it does nothing to improve our standing in the world. In fact, Paul’s proposals would make America less safe and less secure.

“Simply put, if Rand Paul had a foreign policy slogan, it would be – The Rand Paul Doctrine: Blame America. Retreat from the World.”

Vacations and Vocations
As the president golfs the days away, Senator Paul puts his medical skills to use on behalf of others.

By Kevin D. Williamson

President Barack Obama is spending his vacation golfing on Martha’s Vineyard. Hillary Rodham Clinton is spending her vacation in the habitual Clintonian mode, making a vulgar spectacle of herself in the Hamptons. Joe Biden, not that anybody cares, is off to Grand Teton.

Senator Rand Paul, on the other hand, is spending his vacation in Guatemala, performing eye surgeries on poor children who need care. (Eliana Johnson wrote about the trip here.) As the Washington Post points out, this is not a new thing for the senator-surgeon; on this trip, he saw two patients he’d first treated 15 years ago.

For once, the Washingtonian term “optics” is entirely apt.

Senator Paul will come out of his vacation looking pretty good. Given the political class’s endless appetite for self-serving theater, I found myself wondering why President Obama, Mrs. Clinton, or Vice President Biden did not choose to spend their vacations in a similar way, offering to put their skills and abilities to use on behalf of others. And then I realized that this was a deeply stupid question on my part.

What the hell would they do?

...

US Senator Rand Paul likes to spend his vacations helping people to see better. Last week, the Kentucky senator (an ophthalmologist) was on a humanitarian mission, performing pro bono eye surgery in Salama, Guatemala.

And while some Guatemalans are sure to have better vision as a result, Americans are starting to envision the possibility he could be president.

Polls conducted by NBC News and Marist College last month showed him either winning or tied against leading Republican rivals in both the Iowa and New Hampshire presidential primaries.

This is not an aberration; Paul, who was elected in 2010, has long polled well in these important early states.

It's too early to make any serious predictions, but winning the first two primary contests would potentially set him up as a juggernaut for the Republican presidential nomination. As the Washington Post's Aaron Blake observed: "No non-incumbent Republican presidential candidate has won both states since they were granted first-in-the-nation status in 1976. Not one."

Is the Senate on a summer break? I haven't been watching the daily news much lately?
His father used to do pro bono baby deliveries back before Gov't intervention helped make medical care costs soar to unbelievable heights.

Rand Paul Warns Dems What Will Happen if They Nominate ‘War Hawk’ Hillary Clinton

by Matt Wilstein | 4:55 pm, August 22nd, 2014

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shared some harsh words about potential 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton in this preview of an interview he taped for this week’s Meet the Press. Wearing his surgical scrubs while on a medical mission to Guatemala, Paul predicted what would happen if Democrats decide to nominate a “war hawk” like Clinton in the next presidential election.

“If you wanna see a transformational election, let the Democrats put forward a war hawk like Hillary Clinton, and you’ll see a transformation like you’ve never seen,” Paul said, foreshadowing how he plans to run against the former secretary of state.

In another clip released by NBC Friday, Paul made his first on camera comments about the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.“One of the best things they’ve done so far in Ferguson, was send an African American police officer down there to talk to people in the community,” Paul told NBC’s Chris Jansing. “Now, it hadn’t worked completely, I’ll admit that. But it’s a better way than shooting tear gas at people in their front yard.”

Watch both videos below, via NBC News:

Rand’s Latin American Campaign Stop
It was the first foreign trip of the 2016 presidential campaign.

By Eliana Johnson


Consider it the first foreign trip of Rand Paul’s presidential campaign. That’s not how the Kentucky senator characterized the six days he spent in Guatemala this week, most of them performing free eye surgeries in the small, impoverished city of Salama, but he didn’t need to.

The trip was marked by all of the trappings of a politician on the ascent. Paul was accompanied by his top political advisers, personal friends, his ad men, several reporters, and even by cameras from the conservative activist group Citizens United, which is in the process of filming a documentary about him. The senator and his aides were ferried from one location to another by an armored caravan and accompanied at all times by an armed security detail. Media reports were embargoed until he left the country mid-day Thursday.

Paul, who practiced ophthalmology in Bowling Green, Ky., before mounting his senatorial bid in 2010, has always cast himself as a doctor first and a politician second. Over the past four years, that calculation has clearly shifted, though Paul is loath to admit it.

“I don’t think it’s either or, that I do one or the other,” he says.

Americans have never elected a president with a medical degree, and Paul, who is fashioning himself as a new type of Republican, isn’t shy about the qualities he thinks a doctor would bring to the Oval Office. “I personally think that if we got rid of all the lawyers and replaced them with all the doctors our country would be much better off,” he says, sitting on an examination table and clad in medical scrubs, “because doctors are “problem-solvers who don’t get caught up in partisanship.”

Rand Paul is having a moment. A recent cover story for The New York Times Magazine dubbed the potential Republican presidential candidate the “Pearl Jam” of the libertarian movement and a force that could win over young voters in 2016. It’s a tantalizing theory for the right and a fun story for the media. But the data suggests that the senator from Kentucky has his work cut out for him.

So far, Paul isn’t doing much better among young voters than the Republican nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney, or than Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, is currently doing.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been eight live-interview national polls that detail results among young voters (ages 18 to 29 or 18 to 34), and matched Paul against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Together, these polls give us the views of more than 1,000 young voters. The same polls matched Clinton against Christie. The surveys show that young voters don’t see any difference between Paul and other Republican politicians.

Why should we trust these surveys? We shouldn’t expect early polls to tell us the final vote in 2016, but it’s probable that each candidate’s coalitions will remain mostly intact. Both the subsample and the overall margin should shift relatively uniformly. For example, Republicans should do better with white voters than they do overall, even if their margin among both shrinks or widens.

With Democrat Hillary Clinton Likely 2016 Neoconservative Standard Bearer, Republicans Should Offer a Real Alternative — Such as Rand Paul

By Doug Bandow
This article appeared in Forbes on August 18, 2014.

U.S. foreign policy is a bipartisan fiasco. George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies gave the American people Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving. Barack Obama has proved to be a slightly more reluctant warrior, but he is taking the country back into Iraq.

Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, appears never to have met a war that he didn’t want Americans to fight. Hillary Clinton, the unannounced Democratic front-runner for 2016, supported her husband’s misbegotten attempt at nation-building in Kosovo and led the drive for war in Libya, which is violently unraveling.

Most of Clinton’s potential GOP opponents share Washington’s bomb, invade, and occupy consensus. The only exception is Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. He stands alone advocating a foreign policy which reflects the bitter, bloody lessons of recent years.

The Islamic State of Syria and the Levant is the latest result of Washington’s incessant and counterproductive meddling in the Middle East. Nowhere has U.S. policy been more disastrous. Indeed, what intervention, under Republican or Democratic administration, has worked well in that region in the last three or so decades?

For the past two years, from the moment Ron Paul called off the Revolution and headed back to Texas, the political establishment has been eagerly waiting for his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, to run for president. They’ve watched with amusement as Paul popped up around the country—in Iowa and New Hampshire, at evangelical powwows, Howard University, the ACLU—and at the top of early 2016 polls. Unlike his father, it’s hard to deny that he Paul is a “serious” candidate. But the idea that he could actually be elected President of the United States? That’s never been taken very seriously.

But with half of the GOP’s 2016 bench trying to avoid prison time and Democrats spinning their wheels in Obama’s second-term rut, the idea of a President Rand Paul is starting to sound less and less crazy. On issues like criminal justice reform, mass surveillance, and drug policy Paul is casting himself as Another Option, carving out new space as the candidate who can make room for both small-government libertarians and other voters—young people and minorities mostly—who don’t see either party as particularly effective or relevant. And some of what he’s saying makes a lot of sense.

Take Paul’s comments about the events in Ferguson, Missouri. In an op-ed published by TIME Thursday, the Kentucky Senator laid out a remarkably blunt, even angry, assessment of the racial tensions at the center of this week’s riots, linking policing issues to his broader critique of the federal government.

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