By Doug Newman
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Before you jump on the Rand 2016 bandwagon, you would do well to take a few minutes and read this short article. Rand Paul said many significant things in his 13-hour filibuster last week. However, just as significant is what he didn’t say.
As Jennifer Rubin put it in the Washington Post: “He wasn’t attacking the war on terror. He wasn’t attacking drone use overseas. He surely wasn’t attacking indefinite detention at Guantanamo for enemy combatants.”
Rand Paul is our best Senator. This says a lot more about the Senate than it does about Rand Paul. As someone once said about the former Indiana Hoosier basketball coach Bobby Knight, he has his good points. The problem, though, is his bad points.
902 wins. 3 national titles. One of the cleanest programs in college hoops. Bobby Knight’s temper and boorishness, however, were legendary. Here, in a 1985 game against Purdue, Knight throws a chair onto the court to protest a call.
As someone who has deviated very significantly from what I was raised to believe in politically, I stand by Rand’s right not to be a clone of his father. However, just as way too many people blindly follow party labels, too many of Ron Paul’s followers may be too ready to follow anyone with the last name Paul.
Be careful here. Stand with Rand when he is right. Don’t stand with him when he is wrong.
As someone said to me many years ago, put your trust in principles, not in people. For people will fail you, while principles won’t.
This probably won’t endear me to a lot of the wonderful friends I have made in the Ron Paul R3VOLution. However, it is important that people be warned.
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Can I “steal” that quote about Woodstock/Aushwitz? I love it!
Go ahead Wendy! Thanks!
Your caution is wise, but it’s important to understand just what his filibuster was. He focused on a particular question very narrowly on purpose.
The neocons were able to dismiss Ron as a crank and they want to do the same for Rand. By getting people to rally around anything at all he is showing he’s not a crank, but someone capable of communicating with the American mainstream.
If this was Ron Paul, he’d have brought into his monologue everything from drug prohibition to monetary policy and his enemies would have an easy time pigeonholing him once again as a the GOP’s crazy uncle. The whole thing would have been forgotten by the following morning.
Instead, Rand got the likes of even Reince Priebus to side with him. This grows his influence, and as a result grows the libertarian foothold in our government. I don’t care so much if Rand is as ideologically pure as his dad, since he’s so much better than the neocons he’s displacing.
“Instead, Rand got the likes of even Reince Priebus to side with him. This grows his influence, and as a result grows the libertarian foothold in our government. I don’t care so much if Rand is as ideologically pure as his dad, since he’s so much better than the neocons he’s displacing.”
That’s just wishful thinking. Randall Paul is a republican, not a libertarian. He’s in the hot tub with the neocons. He’s not displacing any neocons, and he doesn’t make the GOP fatboys nervous.
You should be hoping that he doesn’t “grow influence” as you put it. There’s no “libertarian foothold” in Congress, and there never will be.
That’s the winning attitude that has made the Libertarian Party such a success. Spare me the internet indignation and take a victory when you can get one.
Whatever happened to the sane member of clan Paul, Ru?
Can we have hir back, please?
At least he said something, people need to take it a step at a time. For Christ sake the man spoke for 13 hours about our right. That may sound selfish but we as America need to fix us first. We need to take measures to get rid of these corrupt politicians. Wah wah wah, he didnt say this and he didn’t say that. People always need to nip pick something. Can’t just congrats the freaking man for doing what he did right!?