“Compassionate Paleolibertarianism”: Rand Paul Offers Free Eye Exam With Deportation
Not long ago, Rand Paul appeared at a fund-raiser for full-time immigration hawk and occasional racist Steve King, where he found himself uncomfortably close to a young Mexican immigrant, causing him to panic and flee. Now Paul tells Breitbart News he supports the House bill that would end President Obama’s policy of granting relief from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children.
As Sam Stein points out, Paul has been telling Republicans they need to reach out to nonwhite voters and show them they care. In an odd bit of timing, Paul’s endorsement of draconian immigration policy coincides with his trip to Guatemala to perform free eye surgery. It was just Rand Paul and some Guatemalans who need medical care. Plus a wee entourage consisting of “three television cameras, three photographers, six reporters, a political aide, two press secretaries, [and] conservative activist David Bossie.” Basically, your standard medical crew, in other words. You could risk getting medical treatment without the director of such films as Battle for America (starring Dick Morris) standing by, but why risk it?
One might detect a dissonance between Paul’s warm-and-fuzzy medical mission and his hard-line stance toward Dreamers. But it actually fits together quite sensibly. The 2016 hopeful opposes universal health insurance, and he wants to deport half a million people who grew up in America. But Rand Paul will personally provide every deported immigrant with a free eye exam. Call it compassionate paleolibertarianism.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, August 22, 2014
“Rand Paul’s Trick”: Big Emphasis On Middle-Class Voters At The Expense Of Po’ Folks
Mike Gerson pulls off a nice two-cushion shot in a WaPo column on GOP minority outreach. First off, he spanks reformicons for their big-emphasis on middle-class voters, arguably at the expense of po’ folks:
They consistently pitch their approach toward the middle class — in part to distinguish it from previous iterations of compassionate or “bleeding heart” (Kemp’s phrase) conservatism. The cover of the reform-conservative manifesto — “Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class” — features a lawn mower on fresh-cut grass. The conservative rebirth will evidently spring from suburban yards on a lazy Saturday morning….
A party that does not forthrightly address the largest source of division in U.S. history and American life — now dramatized in the tear gas haze of Ferguson, Mo. — is not morally or intellectually serious. And even as a political matter, women voters, Catholic voters and younger voters would prefer a chief executive who seeks the interests of all Americans, including those unlikely to vote for him or her. A commitment to national unity is an indicator of public character. The Kemp project has never been more urgent for Republicans.
So Gerson should be pleased by Rand Paul, with his particular focus on African-American outreach, right? No, not so much. He considers Paul’s ability to come up with selective libertarianish positions that sound attractive to non-government-haters a “trick.”
Paul has risen to prominence by employing a political trick, which is already growing old. He emphasizes the sliver of his libertarianism that gets nods of agreement (say, rolling back police excesses) while ignoring the immense, discrediting baggage of his ideology (say, discomfort with federal civil rights law or belief in a minimal state incapable of addressing poverty and stalled mobility).
As a senator, this tactic has worked. But were Paul to become the GOP presidential nominee, the media infatuation would end, and any Democratic opponent would have a field day with Paul’s disturbing history and cramped ideology. On racial issues, the GOP needs a successor to Kemp — and an alternative to Paul.
Get used to these sort of attacks if Paul’s viability grows. At some point, of course, they would vanish altogether if the man gets close to the GOP nomination.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 19, 2014
“Not A Single GOP Ripple”: So Much For Politics Stopping At The Water’s Edge
We talked earlier about Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who brought three television cameras, three photographers, six reporters, a political aide, two press secretaries, and far-right activist David Bossie to Guatemala for a “stage-managed political voyage.” But it appears that wasn’t the only reason for the trip.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told the Guatemalan president the surge of child immigrants flooding the U.S. border this year is a result of President Obama’s policies, not problems in Central America.
“I told him, frankly, that I didn’t think the problem was in Guatemala City, but that the problem was in the White House in our country, and that the mess we’ve got at the border is frankly because of the White House’s policies,” Paul told Brietbart News in an article published Thursday.
According to the report in The Hill, the Kentucky Republican sat down with Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina for 45 minutes, and the senator discussed politics with the foreign head of state.
“I think what’s happened at the border is all squarely at the president’s lap,” Paul said. “The problem and the solution aren’t in Guatemala. The problem and solution reside inside the White House.”
As a substantive matter, the senator’s position is tough to defend or even understand. President Obama didn’t sign the 2008 human-trafficking measure into law; he didn’t create awful conditions in Central American countries; and he didn’t encourage anyone to lie to desperate families about what would happen to their children. If there’s a coherent explanation for why the White House is to blame, it’s hiding well.
But even putting that aside, since when is it kosher for U.S. officials to travel abroad to condemn U.S. leaders like this?
In fairness, it’s hard to say with certainty exactly what Rand Paul told President Molina during their discussion. I haven’t seen a video of the meeting and all we have to go on is the senator’s own claims.
But if Paul is telling the truth, he traveled abroad, visited with a foreign leader, and spent time trashing the president of the United States.
I seem to remember a time when there were norms that deemed actions like this unacceptable.
Under traditional American standards, some considered it inappropriate to criticize the president when he was overseas. More importantly, when U.S. officials were outside the country, norms called on those officials to refrain from criticizing America’s elected leaders.
I guess that doesn’t apply anymore? These standards were certainly in place during the Bush/Cheney era.
Here’s what happened in 2006 when Al Gore gave a speech at a conference in Saudi Arabia in which he criticized Bush policies towards the Muslim world – as summarized by The New York Times’ Chris Sullentrop:
“As House Democrats David Bonior and Jim McDermott may recall from their trip to Baghdad on the eve of the Iraq war, nothing sets conservative opinionmongers on edge like a speech made by a Democrat on foreign soil. Al Gore traveled to Saudi Arabia last week, and in a speech there on Sunday he criticized ‘abuses’ committed by the U.S. government against Arabs after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A burst of flabbergasted conservative blogging followed the Associated Press dispatch about the speech… The editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily accused Gore of ‘supreme disloyalty to his country’….”
The Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto accused Gore of “denouncing his own government on foreign soil” and quoted the above accusation of “disloyalty.” Commentary was abundant all but accusing Gore of treason for criticizing the U.S. in a foreign land.
I’ll concede that such niceties may be antiquated, and maybe no one cares about this anymore. But if presidential criticism abroad was outrageous in the Bush/Cheney era, why does it barely cause a ripple now?
Update: Just to flesh this out further, in 2010, then-House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) traveled to Israel in the hopes of undermining U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. At the time, this caused quite a stir in foreign-policy circles – it seemed extraordinary for an elected American official to travel abroad in order to work against his own country’s position.Perhaps now, with the Rand Paul example in mind, the practice is becoming more common.
For even more context, note that in 2007, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) met with Syrian officials in Syria. Republicans, including Cantor, suggested Pelosi may have violated the Logan Act, “which makes it a felony for any American ‘without authority of the United States’ to communicate with a foreign government to influence that government’s behavior on any disputes with the United States.”
One wonders who, if anyone, will raise similar allegations against Rand Paul.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 22, 2014
“A Tough Week For Sen Pearl Jam”: Rand Paul Spouting ‘Weaselspeak’ Like A Native
I haven’t commented yet on Robert Draper’s much-discussed New York Times Magazine piece entitled “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” That’s partly because my instinctive hostility to libertarianism (possibly due to an early high-school brush with the adolescent virus of Objectivism) means I have to calm down and think clearly before writing of such things. And it’s partly because Draper’s piece–while fascinating like everything the man writes–spends a lot of time retailing dubious libertarian claims that this or that generational trend on a scattered assortment of issues means The Movement is on the brink of some national breakthrough (as Draper notes, we’ve heard that before).
But the most interesting part of the piece is the increasingly familiar idea that Sen. Rand Paul has the skills and flexibility to launch some sort of gussied-up version of the Eternally Correct Ideology with enough mass appeal to conquer the GOP and then the nation. It’s analogous to how some movement conservatives looked at Ronald Reagan, who wasn’t as simon-pure as Barry Goldwater by any stretch of the imagination, but was trusted to have the best interests of The Cause foremost in his mind, and knew where to trim and prevaricate in the pursuit of votes. One of Draper’s aging hipster libertarian interlocutors offered a similar analogy of Rand Paul being Pearl Jam to his old man’s Nirvana.
I’ve earlier talked about Rand seeking to advance some sort of Big Tent Libertarianism that’s soft enough around the edges and weasely enough on tough issues to be tempting to many regular Republicans looking for a change of pace without abandoning core anti-government and Obama-bashing principles. He’s been pretty good at it in the past (viz. his election in not-exactly-hipster Kentucky), but as I’ve been noting, he’s struggling now with a pattern of self-contradiction and transparent flip-flopping. As usual, Charlie Pierce sums it up pungently after noting the snares Paul has become entangled in after his flight from DREAMers at a fundraiser with Steve King earlier this week:
America’s brogressive love-puppet speaks the weaselspeak like a native, doesn’t he? He doesn’t want any contact with the berating scofflaws, but he wants them to have work permits, but not in-state tuition. In four or five days, he will likely reverse all three of these reversals of positions. He will feel very strongly all three ways and, also, free pot! All in all, I am disinclined to agree with my friend Bob Draper that we are living through the libertarian moment, at least as represented by Senator Aqua Buddha. This is because “the libertarian moment” is a scam.
Paul has similar trouble sticking to a coherent position on all kinds of issues, from abortion and same-sex marriage (often relying on the usual “federalism” dodge when he’s not taking the most hard-core positions imaginable and/or suggesting these shouldn’t be “priorities” for the GOP) to national security and fiscal policy. The big question is whether in running for president as a first-term senator he has enough base support beyond his old man’s Revolution to ever get to the point where non-libertarians are confronted with the option of finding him acceptable. If I were him I’d go off on a retreat with the Koch Brothers and whoever else he relies on for serious money and advice (leaving the hipsters at home) and hammer out a platform and strategy he can stick to for an extended period of time. The day-to-day improvisation is beginning to sound less like Pearl Jam than the Experimental Blues/Jazz Jam from This Is Spinal Tap.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 8, 2014
“Abandon Ship, Abandon Ship!”: Rand Paul Runs From Immigration Talk With Steve King, But Rest Of GOP Is Not So Lucky
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) got into a tense exchange with two DREAMers on Monday, causing Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to physically distance himself from the anti-immigration hardliner. Other Republicans should be thinking about following Paul’s lead.
The confrontation took place at a fundraiser in Okoboji, Iowa, on Monday. Two members of the Dream Action Coalition, Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas, approached the lawmakers and introduced themselves as beneficiaries of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Last week, King led the Republican House majority’s push to end the program, which grants temporary deportation relief and work permits for some young immigrants.
After Andiola offered King an opportunity to rip up her DACA card, things quickly got heated. She referenced King’s infamous comment that for every DREAMer who’s a valedictorian, “there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” and the congressman responded by grabbing her wrist.
“Stop a minute,” King said sharply. “You’re very good at English. You know what I’m saying.”
Where was Senator Paul throughout this testy exchange? As soon as Andiola said the words “I’m actually a DREAMer, myself,” Paul put down his hamburger mid-chew, got up, and bolted from the table.
The rest of the Republican Party should be so lucky.
There’s little mystery behind Paul’s decision to abandon ship. The freshman senator will almost certainly run for president in 2016, framing himself as a new kind of Republican who’s not afraid to sell conservatism to skeptical audiences. Improving the GOP’s relationship with Latinos is central to that message, and appearing on camera with King while he grips a DREAMer’s wrist and badgers her about her English skills would be supremely unhelpful.
But whether they like it or not, Republicans are now tied to King’s hardline positions on immigration. That’s what they get for House leadership’s decision to adopt King’s approach to addressing the border crisis after their first attempt flopped in embarrassing fashion.
The result was an immigration bill that would do little to alleviate the crisis at the border, but would dramatically expedite the deportation process and completely gut the current protections for immigrants who were illegally brought to the country as children. Or as King gleefully put it, “The changes brought into this [bill] are ones I’ve developed and advocated for over the past two years…It’s like I ordered it off the menu.”
Perhaps Republicans should think twice about taking orders from a man who has compared immigrants to dogs, livestock and the Visigoths who sacked Rome, among other outbursts.
It’s not as though Latino voters haven’t noticed the GOP’s decision to abandon its plan to become “inclusive and welcoming” in favor of cementing itself as the party of “Deport ‘em all,” as Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) put it after last week’s vote. According to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, Latinos view the GOP unfavorably by an overwhelming 65 to 29 percent margin (by contrast, they view Democrats favorably, 61 to 33 percent). While Latino voters’ disgust with Republicans may not make much of a tangible difference in the 2014 midterms, which will be decided in solidly red states, you can bet that the GOP will regret running to the right of Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” plan once the 2016 presidential election rolls around.
But really, the GOP should consider itself lucky if King only drives its immigration policy. After all, he has other plans that could be even more politically damaging to the party.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, August 5, 2014
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