“Can America Stand Rand?”: Cranking Up His ‘Libertarian’ Campaign
Platitudes typically litter the announcement speech of every aspiring president, and Rand Paul’s address in Louisville today was no exception. “We have come to take our country back,” he thundered—or tried to thunder—“from the special interests that use Washington at their personal piggy bank.”
Exactly what those special interests might be, he neglected to say — although they probably don’t include the oil or coal lobbies he tends to favor. He went on to rant against “both parties” and “the political system,” not to mention “big government,” deficit spending, and the federal debt. Naturally he prefers “small government” because “the love of liberty pulses in my veins.”
Yet Paul delivered these encrusted clichés with impressive energy, to an enthusiastic crowd featuring enough youthful and minority faces sprinkled among the Tea Party types to lend a touch of credibility to claims that he is a “different kind of Republican.” Speaking about urban poverty and education, the Kentucky Republican even name-checked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a gesture that too many elected officials in his party, especially from the South, still find difficult. (His father Ron Paul, watching from the audience, may have stifled a chuckle, recalling how his racist newsletters regularly excoriated the late civil rights leader as a “pro-communist philanderer” and worse, while blasting Ronald Reagan for signing the bill that made King’s birthday a national holiday.)
Appealing to younger and minority voters, Paul wisely emphasized his ideas about cutting back the machinery of surveillance and incarceration. Likewise, he kept the required paeans to economic “freedom” sufficiently vague to avoid alienating potential supporters, like students who might not appreciate his hostility to federal loans and grants, and families whose survival depends on food stamps and unemployment benefits that he would slash.The upside of a Paul campaign may be that his dissenting perspective on issues such as Iran, Cuba, and the surveillance state brings a small degree of sanity to the Republican primary debate. Although he parroted much nonsense about the Obama administration’s foreign policy, he dared to say that the goal of diplomacy “should be and always is peace, not war.”
Equally beneficial would be a frank discussion of the libertarian delusions that underlie his economic platform – and the real effects that such policies would have on American communities, families, and workers.Paul still hates the auto bailout, although killing it would have cost another million jobs. While he rails against deficit spending and Obama’s economic stimulus, the clear consensus is that unemployment would have soared without those measures. No doubt he agreed with his father’s repeated warnings that government spending would lead to “hyperinflation” and depression, but we have seen precisely the opposite: a revived economy, recovering employment, and inflation that remains too low to worry any sane person.
Among Paul’s easiest targets today was the IRS, which he promises to diminish or even abolish with his favorite “new idea,” a flat tax. That was a fresh proposal, perhaps, back when right-wing academics Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka unveiled it in a 1983 book titled Low Tax, Simple Tax, Flat Tax. There is no reason to believe that Rand Paul’s flat tax would differ significantly from theirs in design or impact; namely, to worsen inequality, raising the burden on the poor and middle class while benefiting the very rich.
Mocking the federal proclivity to spend more than the IRS collects, Paul chortled today, “Isn’t $3 trillion enough?” But while he promises to “balance” the budget, his 17 percent flat tax wouldn’t collect even that amount — which means enormous cuts in every budget sector, from education and infrastructure to defense.
Authors Hall and Rabushka described their flat tax as “a tremendous boon to the economic elite” and noted, candidly, “it is an obvious mathematical law that lower taxes on the successful will have to be made up by higher taxes on average people.” We shall see whether Paul is as honest as the authors of his tax plan.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, April 7, 2015
“Rand Paul Is Already Doomed”: The Simple Reason Why He Will Never, Ever Be President
William F. Buckley Jr. once famously said that Republicans should nominate the most conservative candidate who can also win. The test has proven a surprisingly accurate predictor of the party’s presidential candidate: Mitt Romney beat the unelectable conservatives to his right; George W. Bush beat the waffling conservatives to his left.
This time around, most of the potential GOP candidates once again lack either broad electoral appeal (Ted Cruz) or the credentials to win over the conservative base (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie). One candidate, however, has the unique distinction of failing both of Buckley’s criteria: Rand Paul.
The Kentucky senator, who officially announced his presidential run on Tuesday, is perhaps alone among Republican candidates in being both insufficiently right-wing and too far outside the mainstream of American politics. Because of these twin weaknesses, Paul is spectacularly ill-suited to capture his party’s nomination.
Paul’s problems with the right are legion, but it’s his foreign policy views — from ISIS to Russia to Cuba — that most obviously separate him from conservatives. On Iran, for instance, the Republican Congress has repeatedly flayed President Obama for failing to confront the dire threat posed by the ayatollahs. But in 2007, Paul said that “…If you look at it intellectually, look at the evidence that Iran is not a threat. Iran cannot even refine their own gasoline,” according to Bloomberg News.
As his presidential campaign drew near, Paul lurched to put himself closer to the mainstream of the Republican party. But even if he now falls completely in lockstep with conservatives, it’s hard to imagine how Paul can escape the shadow of his former statements. In 2009, for instance, Paul suggested that former Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to invade Iraq to benefit his former employer, Halliburton. Then there was his policy speech on the Ukraine last year, which the National Review called “bizarre and delusional.” There’s also Paul’s flip-flopping on the legality of drone strikes.
Conservatives are clearly unconvinced by the reinvention, and Paul’s opponents are already jumping at the chance to portray him as an isolationist unconcerned about global terrorism. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a possible presidential candidate, said this week that Paul is “to the left of Barack Obama” on foreign policy. Conservative hawks have already purchased $1 million in advertising to portray Paul as dangerous on foreign policy, according to The New York Times.
Paul, of course, is not alone among GOP contenders in facing challenges winning over the right-wing. Jeb Bush, in particular, has already been criticized for his (allegedly) conciliatory views on immigration and education. Romney was able to overcome similar suspicions on the right.
The difference is that where Bush’s heresies broaden his possible base of support, Paul’s actually make him less appealing in a general election. Romney could plausibly argue that his history of working with Democrats in Massachusetts made him more likely to beat Obama. Jeb Bush can rightfully claim that a more humane immigration policy will give Republicans a better shot with Hispanic voters.
Though infuriating to conservatives, these appeals to electoral realities won valuable insider support for Romney. They’ve proven similarly effective at giving Bush the edge in the “invisible primary” with the establishment. But what comparable electoral advantage could Paul claim from his controversial heterodoxies on foreign policy? And that’s before we even mention his policy quirks outside the realm of international relations — like, for example, the strange beliefs about monetarism he inherited from his father (the economically dubious suggestion that America return to the gold standard chief among them). His more humane approach to criminal sentencing is similarly unlikely to win over conservatives.
And so, even as Paul launches his campaign in earnest, one thing is certain about the 2016 race: We don’t know who the Republicans will nominate for president. We just know it won’t be Rand Paul.
By: Jeff Stein, a recent Cornell graduate and The Editor of the Ithaca Voice; Salon, April 7, 2015
“Libertarian-ish, Not A Libertarian”: Rand Paul Becomes Less Of A Libertarian Every Day
On Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky, Senator Rand Paul will officially kick off his campaign for president. As the New York Times reported Monday, his father, former Congressman Ron Paul, will be right by his son’s side for the campaign announcement. But don’t expect to see much of the elder Paul throughout the campaign—or hear much from him. While Rand and Ron both consider themselves libertarians, their positions on multiple issues have diverged in recent months as Rand has attempted to make himself a legitimate contender for the Republican nomination. In the process, that has alienated many libertarian supporters of Ron.
While Ron Paul was always an outsider candidate with no real shot of becoming president, Rand has much larger national ambitions. That has required him to make compromises on some of his positions, compromises that many libertarians find unacceptable. Retaining their support will almost certainly be a necessity for Rand to win the GOP nomination. But will they look past his heresies?
Rand Paul has been a savvy political operator during his time in the Senate and has always sought to leverage his libertarian support on issues that had broad acceptance within the GOP. For instance, Paul expertly seized on the issues of criminal justice reform and the overreach of the National Security Agency (NSA). These were long-held libertarian positions that, partially thanks to Paul’s advocacy, suddenly found renewed interest among mainstream Republicans. The issues garnered support among conservatives because they would shrink the size of government. They were the perfect issues for him to retain his libertarian credibility while earning greater support among traditional Republican voters.
But recent issues have demonstrated where traditional Republicans differ from libertarians, and that has put Paul in an uncomfortable position. Libertarians like Ron Paul set a very high bar for military conflict. Often, they are called isolationists, a term that has sometimes been used to describe the younger Paul, much to his chagrin. In the early parts of his time in the Senate, Paul displayed many of those leanings. In 2011, for instance, he called for ending all military aid to Israel. As late as June 2014, Paul wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq. “Why should we choose a side, and if we do, who are we really helping?” he asked in the piece. Just a few months later, after the Islamic State murdered two American journalists, Paul condemned President Barack Obama for not doing more to stop the terrorist group.
Over the following nine months, Paul’s remarks about the military and his policy positions have seemed to become more and more hawkish. Last October, he gave a speech on military intervention that you could never imagine his dad giving. “The war on terror is not over, and America cannot disengage from the world,” he said. “To defend our country we must understand that a hatred of our values exists, and acknowledge that interventions in foreign countries may well exacerbate this hatred, but that ultimately, we must be willing and able to defend our country and our interests.” It was quite a rhetorical change from a man who just 20 months earlier performed a 13-hour talking filibuster over U.S. drone use.
In January, Paul made news at a forum hosted by the Koch Brothers when he challenged the traditional Republican line on military action. “Are you ready to send ground troops into Iran? Are you ready to bomb them? Are you ready to send in 100,000 troops?” he asked senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who had criticized the Iran negotiations. “I’m a big fan of trying to exert and trying the diplomatic option as long as we can. If it fails, I will vote to resume sanctions and I would vote to have new sanctions. But if you do it in the middle of negotiations, you’re ruining it.” That was music to the ears of libertarians everywhere. Maybe, they thought, Paul would actually stick to his libertarian roots on foreign policy.
Nope. In early March, Paul signed on to Senator Tom Cotton’s letters to the leaders of Iran, explaining why the American political system effectively prohibited Obama from making any lasting commitments in the negotiations. The letter received widespread condemnation, including from many within the Republican Party. But in libertarian circles, Paul’s signature was treated as almost an act of treason. At the Daily Beast, Olivia Nuzzi reported on a number of libertarian leaders who declared Paul’s signature the final straw; they would no longer support him for president.
At the end of March, Paul proposed a massive increase in defense spending, raising it more than $190 billion over the next two years and offsetting those increases with cuts elsewhere. As Bloomberg’s Dave Weigel reported at the time, this doesn’t quite represent a flip-flop. But it’s still quite a change from Paul’s 2011 budget which would have reduced defense spending to $542 billion in 2016, including additional war funding. Under his new plan, defense spending would be nearly $700 billion in 2016.
As his 2016 officially kicks off, Paul will have to strike a balance between appeasing the defense hawks and libertarians within the Republican Party, both of whom view him suspiciously. To some extent, his movement back and forth between the factions has made it unclear what his foreign policy views actually are. Last week, for instance, as Republican candidates criticized the president’s deal with Iran, Paul stayed noticeably quiet. When his staff finally responded to questions to Bloomberg on Monday, they offered little insight into Rand’s actual position on the deal. That tactic—sidestepping the question—will work for now. But eventually it’s going to fail as Republican voters and donors will demand his position on different foreign policy issues.
The good news for Paul is that his positions on the NSA and criminal justice reform, among other issues, still play well within the party. More than any other candidate, he has made a concerted effort to reach African Americans. These are all libertarian positions that will play well for him during the primary. But it will still be hard for many Ron Paul followers to overlook—or brush off—Rand’s turn to hawkishness on foreign policy, assuming he goes in that direction. For instance, Nick Gillepsie, the editor in chief of the libertarian magazine Reason, calls Paul “libertarian-ish,” not a libertarian.
Do Republican primary voters want a “liberatarian-ish” candidate? We’ll find out soon enough.
By: Danny Vinik, The New Republic, April 7, 2015
“Boldly Claiming Things That Aren’t Even Remotely True”: Ted Cruz’s Biggest Liability Is Probably His Constant Lying
Politicians lie. It’s almost non-controversial; elected officials are advocates who want to show themselves and their causes in the best possible light. Nobody tells the whole truth.
Senator Ted Cruz wants you to think he is different: the video he released Monday morning ahead of his presidential campaign announcement was titled “Time for truth.” Those were also the first words he spoke at Liberty University after making his official announcement.
If Cruz is different, however, it’s because of how boldly he claims things that aren’t even remotely true. His vacations from reality take on a gleeful exuberance, like a college freshman on his first trip to Daytona.
Cruz told a CPAC crowd, for example, that Democrats issued an ominous threat to the Catholic Church: “Change your religious beliefs or we’ll use our power in the federal government to shut down your charities and your hospitals.” Politifact naturally deemed this “both incorrect and ridiculous.”
A quick survey of some other Cruz gems:
- Cruz said ISIS is “right now crucifying Christians in Iraq, literally nailing Christians to trees.” It wasn’t, and Cruz wasn’t able to offer any evidence.
- Cruz described a “strong bipartisan majority” in the House that voted to repeal Obamacare. Two Democrats joined the Republicans.
- He bluntly claimed that “the jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws, almost without exception … have the highest crime rates and the highest murder rates.” This is not true.
- In recent weeks, Cruz has been using some variation of this line: “There are 110,000 agents at the IRS. We need to put a padlock on that building and take every one of those 110,000 agents and put them on our southern border.” The IRS doesn’t have 110,000 employees, let alone agents. (There are 14,000).
This may read as an oppo-dump of misstatements from a guy who’s now running for president. But anyone who has followed Cruz’s career knows it’s the tip of the iceberg—he frequently just seems to be free-associating conservative grievances with “facts” pulled from nowhere.
In some ways this is a huge asset for Cruz: he is clearly trying to establish himself as not only the most right-wing presidential candidate, but the truth-teller who isn’t afraid to say what conservatives know to be right. (They got that e-mail forward about it, after all!)
Combined with his aggressive play for evangelical voters, in this way Cruz is not unlike the Michele Bachmann of years past—except with a much better political resume and a bigger bankroll.
Of course, the last image many people have of Bachmann is being chased down a hallway by CNN’s Dana Bash in the final days of her congressional career; Bash wanted to confront Bachmann over the thoroughly ludicrous claim that Obama was spending $1.4 billion on personal expenses each year. It wasn’t the first time the mainstream media made hay with Bachmann. Even normally credulous reporters just couldn’t resist the easy layup.
One wonders if Cruz, too, might eventually see his truthiness turn into a liability. Speaking at CPAC is one thing, but standing on the national stage seeking to be president is another.
By: George Zornick, The Nation, March 23, 2015
“We Should Just Go Ahead And Start Bombing”: The Insane Logic Underlying Republican Opposition To The Iran Deal
Republicans are, naturally, united in their opposition to the preliminary deal the Obama administration struck with Iran to restrain its nuclear program. And now, the presidential candidates in particular are going to compete with each other to see who can make their opposition more categorical. They’re all criticizing it, of course, and Scott Walker has already said that on the day of his inauguration, he’ll pull out of the deal. I’m guessing the rest of them will follow suit and pledge something similar. The question is: OK, so on January 20, 2017, you announce that we’re out of the deal (since we’re in the Republican fantasy world for the moment, let’s put aside the involvement of Europe and the UN). What happens next?
Well for starters, the Iranians would no longer be constrained by the things they agreed to. They could kick out all the inspectors and institute a crash program to create a nuclear weapon if they wanted. Are Republicans saying that Iran would never do that? I don’t think so. Yet in practice, the Republican position seems to be: 1) We can never trust the Iranians to adhere to the terms of any nuclear deal we sign with them because of their insatiable thirst for nuclear weapons, so 2) If there’s no agreement at all—no limits on nuclear research, no limits on the quantity and purity of uranium they can enrich, no inspections—then everything will be OK.
To be clear, I’m not saying this deal is perfect, though a lot of people who know a lot about this issue are arguing that it’s far stronger than what they expected (see here, for instance). But Republicans aren’t saying we need to reopen negotiations and push for something better. They’re just saying we should scrap the agreement, and then … well, they actually don’t say what happens then.
In effect, the Republican argument is, We’ve put this dangerous criminal in prison, but I don’t think this prison is secure enough. He might escape! So the answer is to tear down the prison and let him go. Then we’ll be safe from him.
So they ought to be asked: Are you proposing a re-negotiation of this deal? Or are you just saying that if we scrap it and reimpose sanctions on Iran, then they’ll capitulate to all our demands? And if that’s what you’re saying, is there any reason at all to think that might happen? After all, Iran has been under sanctions from the U.S., the EU, and many other countries for years, yet their nuclear program has continued. What will be different without an agreement?
We should hear conservatives out on all their specific complaints about this deal. They might have a case to make about particular weaknesses. But in every case, we have to ask: What’s your alternative? I haven’t yet heard an answer from any of them, other than the few honest enough to say what so many of them are thinking, that no deal will ever work and we should just go ahead and start bombing.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, April 3, 2015
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