“A Senator Divided Against Himself Cannot Stand”: Rand Paul Disagrees With Rand Paul, Again
Republican condemnations of President Obama’s counter-terrorism efforts are clearly growing louder, but there’s still some disagreements within the GOP itself.
When discussing ISIS and the national-security threat, for example, one prominent Republican senator recently said, “What’s going on now, I don’t blame on President Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution.”
Another prominent Republican senator later argued the opposite, writing an op-ed that read, “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…. [W]hy, after six years, does President Obama lack a strategy to deal with threats like ISIS?”
Wait, actually both quotes came from the same guy. Benjy Sarlin highlighted the contradiction.
After expressing reluctance to intervene against ISIS over the summer, Sen. Rand Paul abruptly shifted gears on Thursday and announced that he supports military action to eliminate the Islamist group. […]
Paul’s hawkish turn comes after months of hedging and skeptical comments regarding U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Yet Paul boasted on Thursday that as president he would have committed to a grand plan to eliminate ISIS earlier and more effectively than President Obama.
I haven’t the foggiest idea how anyone can take the Kentucky Republican seriously on the issue. Rand Paul seems to have very strong disagreements with Rand Paul, and there’s little hope for reconciliation – one has no use for “interventionists” and the “hawkish members” of his own party; the other is eager to support U.S. military intervention abroad to destroy ISIS.
One has “mixed feelings” about an expansive military operation in the Middle East; the other is outraged by President Obama’s cautious approach to pursuing expansive military operation in the Middle East.
Simon Maloy noted that the same conservatives the senator has spent years disagreeing with about foreign policy are delighted by Paul’s dramatic flip-flop.
In less than a week he went from “let’s be realistic about what we can do militarily” to “destroy ISIS militarily.” The Weekly Standard happily clipped Paul’s remarks under the headline “Rand Paul Supports U.S. War in Middle East to Destroy ISIS.” Neocon pundit Jennifer Rubin — whose Washington Post blog is basically a free-form screed against Rand Paul’s foreign policy — writes today: “Well, welcome aboard, Sen. Paul.”
Of course, the senator’s evolution goes beyond foreign policy. Sarah Smith recently noted that the Kentucky Republican has also changed his mind about federal aid to Israel, use of domestic drones, immigration, elements of the Civil Rights Act, Guantanamo Bay, and even accepting donations from lawmakers who voted for TARP.
And so, I’ll ask again: at what point do Rand Paul’s loyal followers start to reconsider whether Rand Paul actually agrees with them?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 5, 2014
“A Bid To Remain Relevant”: Rand Paul’s Flailing Search For A Hawkish Foreign Policy
Rand Paul this week derided President Obama’s approach to ISIS, then explained what he would do differently if he were president. It turned out, though, that the Republican senator from Kentucky and the president pretty much see eye to eye on the issue.
In a Time op-ed, Paul wrote that he would have “acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS” by launching airstrikes, arming the Kurdish rebels, bolstering Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense, and securing the U.S. border.
One problem: Obama has already done just that, or most of it, anyway. Obama has ordered more than 125 airstrikes in the past month against ISIS; shipped arms to Kurdish forces; provided $225 million in emergency funding for the Iron Dome; and, in the face of GOP obstructionism on immigration, eyed executive action to strengthen the border.
The only area where Paul diverges from Obama is that he would order Congress back from vacation to hear his plan. Given Congress’ apparent reluctance to take on this issue, this is the foreign policy equivalent of Vanilla Ice’s claiming that adding one more note to Ice, Ice, Baby meant he wasn’t ripping off Freddie Mercury.
Paul’s excoriation of Obama is remarkable given that only a few months ago, he explicitly defended the president and blamed ISIS’ proliferation on former President George W. Bush and his gung-ho interventionism.
“I don’t blame President Obama,” he said in a late June appearance on Meet the Press. At the same time, he threw cold water on the idea of a U.S. military intervention, saying, “I’m not so sure where the clear-cut American interest is.”
And as recently as August, Paul wrote a column arguing that hawkish interventionists had “abetted the rise of ISIS.”
On the one hand, it’s not surprising Paul is cribbing the administration’s ideas. Grandstanding aside, almost everyone is pretty much on the same page about how to handle ISIS.
But Paul’s newfound hawkishness is remarkable given his past tendency toward isolationism, which formed the heart of his unique appeal within the GOP. It was also the greatest obstacle to his winning the GOP presidential nomination in a party full of foreign policy hawks.
That dovish position grew even more problematic once Russia invaded Crimea, and once ISIS began swarming across Syria and Iraq. Though Pew last year found Americans’ appetite for foreign entanglements waning, that trend has now reversed, most sharply among Republicans.
Paul is now racing to shed the “isolationist” tag that dogged his proto-presidential candidacy. His Time op-ed even bears the none-too-subtle headline, “I am not an isolationist.”
But Paul is also spitting the same anti-interventionist lines that boosted him in the first place among his war-weary, libertarian faithful. Paul is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and as a result his Time column reads like a bunch of flip-flopping nonsense.
Paul insists he is merely adapting: “I am not an isolationist, nor am I an interventionist,” he wrote in Time. “I look at the world and consider war, realistically and constitutionally.”
It’s certainly possible for changing circumstances to alter one’s global calculus. But they can just as easily alter one’s political calculus, too. In Paul’s case, it’s hard to see his abrupt about-face as anything but a bid to remain relevant as his party lurches rightward on foreign policy.
By: Jon Terbush. The Week, September 5, 2014
“The Republican Quasi-Isolationists Change Their Tune”: America Can Solve All The Worlds Problems Again!
It looks like the debate over what to do about ISIS has given Republicans one fewer thing to argue about:
A roiling national debate over how to deal with the radical Islamic State and other global hot spots has prompted a sudden shift in Republican politics, putting a halt to the anti-interventionist mood that had been gaining credence in the party.
The change is evident on the campaign trail ahead of the November midterm elections and in recent appearances by the GOP’s prospective 2016 presidential candidates, with a near-universal embrace of stronger military actions against the group that has beheaded two American journalists.
A hawkish tone has become integral to several key Republican Senate campaigns, with a group of candidates running in battleground states calling attention to their ties to veterans and their support for the U.S. military at every turn.
The most notable shift has come from Rand Paul, who used to talk a lot about the dangers of interventionism and foreign entanglements, but is now ready for war. “If I were president,” he told the AP, “I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”
This follows on a recent Pew Research poll which found that while last November only 18 percent of Republicans said the U.S. does too little to solve the world’s problems and 52 percent said we do too much, today 46 percent say we’re doing too little and only 37 percent say we’re doing too much.
It’s possible that all those Republicans have changed their perspective because circumstances have changed. ISIS in particular certainly looks much stronger and more threatening than it did a few months ago. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that what has changed is Barack Obama. Once the old conservative narrative that he’s a weak weakling endangering us with his weakness reasserted itself, most of those alleged quasi-isolationists, including the one who wants to be president, scuttled back to the fold.
This highlights a simple fact about today’s Republicans: After six years of the Obama presidency, they define themselves almost entirely by being the opposite of whatever the guy in the White House is. I guarantee you that if Barack Obama did exactly what Rand Paul seems to be recommending—a full-scale war against ISIS—he and millions of other Republicans would change their tune in short order, now claiming that he was pulling us into another quagmire, and America can’t solve all the world’s problems. And they’d be completely sincere.
This is an extension of the way Republicans have been thinking throughout his presidency. As we know, whenever Obama has embraced one of their ideas, like the cap-and-trade carbon-reduction plan, or the conservative health-care plan that became the basis of the Affordable Care Act, they immediately decide that not only is it the soul of evil, but that they’ve always believed that, like the Party in “1984” declaring that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
To a degree, that’s natural. When the other side’s guy is president for two terms, he shapes the whole debate and even how you wind up thinking of yourself. But Republicans have been unusually reactive, I think in part because their abhorrence of Obama is so intense. He could say that he enjoys ice cream, and a million conservatives would swear never to let the vile frozen sludge pass their lips again.
Of course, there’s a core of conservatism that is unchanging, no matter who the president is—taxes and regulations are bad, the rich are noble job creators, the safety net is for leeches, and so on. But on all those other issues that don’t necessarily occupy their ideological core, it does make you wonder if they’ll be able to figure out who they are once Obama is gone come 2017. I guess then they’ll define themselves as against whatever President Clinton is for.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 4, 2014
“The Evolution Of Rand Paul”: Pandering To GOP Mega Donors
A week ago today, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal condemning “interventionists,” who are quick to use military force abroad “with little thought to the consequences.” Over the course of his 900-word piece, the Republican senator was dismissive of the “hawkish members of my own party.”
“A more realistic foreign policy would recognize that there are evil people and tyrannical regimes in this world, but also that America cannot police or solve every problem across the globe,” Paul wrote. “Only after recognizing the practical limits of our foreign policy can we pursue policies that are in the best interest of the U.S.”
But a few days later, the Republican senator attended the annual summit of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ main political operation, where Rand Paul took a very different line.
Speaking to a ballroom later, some of the loudest applause for Paul came when he quipped: “If the president has no strategy, maybe it’s time for a new president.”
In an emailed comment, however, Paul elaborated by saying: “If I were President, I would call a joint session of Congress. I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS militarily.”
Wait, what?
On Wednesday, Paul said he had no use for “interventionists” and the “hawkish members” of his own party who are calling for using force in the Middle East. But just 48 hours later, Paul supports U.S. military intervention abroad to destroy ISIS?
Also keep in mind, less than a month ago, Paul was asked about U.S. airstrikes targeting ISIS targets in Iraq. The senator said he had “mixed feelings” about the offensive. Apparently, those feelings are no longer mixed and Paul is now eager to “destroy ISIS militarily” – says the senator who complained last week about Hillary Clinton being a “war hawk.”
At what point do Rand Paul’s loyal followers start to reconsider whether Rand Paul actually agrees with them?
Sarah Smith recently noted that the Kentucky senator has changed his mind about federal aid to Israel, use of domestic drones, immigration, elements of the Civil Rights Act, Guantanamo Bay, and even accepting donations from lawmakers who voted for TARP.
Now, even the basic elements of his approach to using military force are up for grabs.
I suppose a Paul defender might take heart by assuming the senator doesn’t actually believe these new policy positions; he’s just saying these things to bolster support from centers of power within the Republican Party in advance of a presidential campaign. His genuine beliefs, the argument goes, are the ones he espoused before he started pandering to GOP mega donors.
But if that is the argument, it’s cold comfort. For one thing, once a politician replaces his fundamental beliefs with a more palatable worldview, it’s hard to know which version is the “real” one. For another, the “don’t worry, he’s lying” defense just never seems to resonate with a broad spectrum of voters.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 3, 2014
“Rand Paul’s Fair-Weather Compassion”: How An Ideology Can Cause Terrible Misery
If you haven’t seen the video or photos yet, trust me, you will. Rand Paul in blue scrubs and hiking boots, bringing sight to the blind in an operating room in Guatemala — could there be a more perfect visual for a White House hopeful? And that’s before we even get to the metaphors about restoring vision and fixing problems.
A flattering segment on NBC’s Meet the Press was just the start of extracting the gold from this rich political vein. Campaign ads inevitably will feature video of the senator-surgeon performing the pro bono eye operations, as will a Citizens United documentary about Paul. The conservative group sent a camera crew and a drone to shoot footage him in action in Guatemala.
Let’s stipulate that whatever you think of Paul’s views or the political entourage he brought along, the Kentucky Republican transformed lives on that trip. It was a wonderfully compassionate volunteer act — and that’s where things get complicated.
Paul has been working steadily to create his personal brand of compassionate conservatism, and it’s more substantive than outreach. His causes include restoring voting rights to felons, reforming drug sentencing laws and — after Ferguson — demilitarizing the police. He is a champion of charter schools, which many black parents are seeking out for their children. He has proposed economic incentives to try to revive Detroit. He and Democratic senator Cory Booker are pushing legislation to make it easier for people to create new lives — including expunging or sealing convictions for some juveniles and lifting bans on post-prison food stamps and welfare benefits for some offenders.
All of that is broadly appealing. It’s also consistent with libertarian and conservative principles such as more personal choice, less government intrusion, lower taxes and — in the case of the prison and sentencing reforms — saving government money by reducing recidivism and prison populations. The emphasis is on the “conservative” part of the phrase.
The man who invented the brand and rode it all the way to the White House, George W. Bush, focused on the compassion part. To the dismay of conservatives, he enlarged the federal role in education (he called it “the civil rights issue of our time” and signed the No Child Left Behind Act) and spent a bundle of borrowed money to fight AIDS in Africa, launch a Medicare prescription drug program and try to impose democracy on Iraq.
What you might call fair-weather compassion — compassion that’s limited to policies that cut spending or, at the very least, don’t cost more — is a conservative hallmark in the post-Bush era. But Paul trumped his colleagues and won plaudits from groups like FreedomWorks with a 2013 budget that would have balanced in a lightning-fast five years. It repealed the Affordable Care Act and killed the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. It also privatized Medicare, allowed private Social Security accounts, and shifted Medicaid and food stamps — designed to grow and shrink depending on need — to a system of capped grants to the states. “Gut” was the liberal verb of choice.
Paul’s 2011 budget blueprint would have phased out all foreign aid. “This would cause misery for millions of people on AIDS treatment. It would betray hundreds of thousands of children receiving … malaria treatment,” former Bush aide Michael Gerson said last weekend on NBC after the Paul-in-Guatemala segment aired. “This is a perfect case of how a person can have good intentions but how an ideology can cause terrible misery.”
The ACA, with its premium subsidies and Medicaid expansion, is designed to help just the types of people Paul served in Guatemala. In fact, more than 290,000 newly eligible people had signed up for Medicaid in his home state by mid-April. Yet last year Paul was willing to shut down the government in an attempt to defund the law.
Paul did not release a budget this year, and he said in May that he is “not sure” that Kentucky’s ACA insurance marketplace (Kynect) should be dismantled. Is he giving himself some room to maneuver? Unclear. He continues to favor repeal of the entire ACA and seems most concerned about its impact on local hospitals. One had to lay off 50 people due to the law, he said, so “now we’ve got more people in the wagon, and less people pulling the wagon.”
What he said was debatable — CNHI News Service reported that the hospital, T.J. Samson in Glasgow, is expected to do better financially under the new health law than it did under previous policies. Beyond that, does Paul really want to snatch Medicaid away from nearly 300,000 of his least fortunate constituents? The answer to that question will help determine whether those compassionate images from Guatemala are merely images, or something more.
By: Jill Lawrence, The National Memo, August 28, 2014
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