It must be Bash Rand Paul Day because Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal and Jennifer Rubin and Richard Cohen in the Washington Post all have pieces lambasting Sen. Paul for a variety of sins and apostasies. Our resident Rand Paul supporter, Arthur Gilroy, would say that the Bipartisan Establishment is trying to disappear him, which is in some sense true. Moreover, at least when reading Richard Cohen’s critique, Rand becomes more sympathetic with every passing paragraph.
The supposedly left-leaning Cohen gets offended when anyone attacks the integrity of any villager, whether it be Caspar Weinberger, Scooter Libby, or Dick Cheney. Stephens and Rubin are expressing a mixture of concern that Rand Paul would lose very, very badly to any Democrat and alarm that his formerly “radical” and “outside the mainstream” ideas are becoming more acceptable within the Grand Old Party.
An analogous situation would be the Democrats who didn’t like where Howard Dean was positioning the party and the Republicans who were offended by what they considered his overheated and perhaps conspiratorial rhetoric about the Bush administration’s motive for invading Iraq. Those groups teamed up within the village to do their best to derail Dean’s momentum, and succeeded in denying him a needed win in the Iowa caucuses. That night, Dean imploded, but only with a massive assist from the corporate media which played his tin-eared speech on a loop for more than week.
So, yes, powerful status quo forces are going to try to marginalize and disappear Rand Paul, each for their own reasons. But you should expect progressives to join in the chorus, for a different reason. Rand Paul is encroaching on our turf in certain areas (meaning that we, in effect, agree him in some areas), but we do not see him as someone we can work with constructively. Perhaps we could work with him on some issues if he were to remain a U.S. Senator, but as a presidential candidate, it is his differences not his similarities that are the top concern.
Progressives have no reason to want a libertarian president with ties to the worst in the neo-confederate movement.
Stephens and Rubin are expressing a mixture of concern that Rand Paul would lose very, very badly to any Democrat and alarm that his formerly “radical” and “outside the mainstream” ideas are becoming more acceptable within the Grand Old Party.
Rubin is a joke. Isn’t Rick Perry her mancrush these days? Also, too, the WSJ encouraged this revolt right up until the point they lost control. And they’re now pissed they lost control.
Now there’s something I can get excited about! How do we make this an official holiday?
Also piling on: Rich Lowry and one of the Power Tools. I guess Adelson or the Kochs or Rove or whoever is/are getting the best commentary money can buy.
I assume today was chosen out of the fear that Rand might be able to exploit Tax Day.
And I hope you’re right about progressives understanding that it’s not possible to work with Rand – I’m afraid that Greenwald/Friedersdorf fans among the “liberaltarians” will just ignore the vast majority of his positions and concentrate on how awesome his drone filibuster was, maaaan.
If it weren’t for the Oklahoma contingent, this mop-topped fop would be the stupidest git in the US Senate – and that’s some pretty stiff competition!
In a normal country, they wouldn’t let this moronic mop-topped fop run for Dog-catcher, for fear of the harm he’d do to people and their pets!
Hey, I resemble that remark! — a concerned Okie.
Progressives have no reason to want a libertarian president.
Period. I don’t care who it is.
I can respect people who believes that no one in the government can be trusted. I can NOT respect people who believe that no one in the government, except Ron and Rand Paul, can be trusted. Those two are scary. Just because they agree with us on a couple of issues doesn’t mean they are good or trustworthy people.
And…after a feint toward some sort of sympathy for Rand Paul and the Libertarian view in general, Booman posts the same kind of lame old shit that is regularly used by those that he has been criticizing.
Rand Paul and his father before him have been very explicit about their take on racism.
Once again…sigh…Ron Paul on the floor of the House of Representatives. (Emphases mine.):
Rand Paul has publicly made the same points numerous times.
“…ties to the worst in the neo-confederate movement?”
You mean the so-called “progressives” who are truly “tied”…bound by big money… to the worst in the corporate-owned Deep State/Permanent Government system…are to be forgiven for their complicity in the fall of the United States but Ron Paul and his son will forever be branded by a few posts and workers in long-gone (and thoroughly rejected by the Pauls) political newsletters?
Great work, Booman.
You just threw a knuckleball that turned into a fastball about two feet from the plate., The Yankees could use you.
Oh.
Wait a minute.
You are working for a functioning media segment of the current federal“Yankees,” their present president and the party to which he at least superficially belongs.
Sorry.
Kinda tiring, alla that talking point polishing, eh?
My bad.
Later…
AG
Any other politician, and you’d be contrasting their rhetoric to their actions and associations.
The Pauls? Oh, their rhetoric stands on its own, I guess.
Their “actions” have actually been quite good.
Ron Paul held his own personal line consistently in Congress for over 20 years and Rand Paul is now doing the same thing. Do you disagree with some of their statements and/or beliefs? OK, but a cursory glance at their statements about why they hold those beliefs will show you that they are based on quite defensible moral and practical grounds.
Instead, what happens is that when they oppose big government by saying that the Civil Rights Act was a lousy tactic, y’all start crying out that said opinion was based not on tactical considerations of how to get to a position of real equality in this country but rather on strategically racist goals.
I ask you…do you think that real racial equality has come about here in the U.S. since the Civil Rights era?
If you do, then you are as blind as a bat. In many respects the situation has gotten worse. Sure, the media portray a post-racial society. We elected a brownish president. What could be better?
This could be better, just for starters.
Do the fucking math.
Yeah.
The Civil Rights bill really helped.
Riiiiight…
So why the disparity?
Unless you are willing to be some kind of stupidly blind racist yourself and say that people of color are in some way inferior to Europeans, then the only answer…the only right answer, for sure…is that poverty breeds jailable crime. If about 45% of the combined black and Hispanic population is in jail whereas only 5% of the white population is in jail then economic troubles brought about by racism are the sole acceptable answer.
The Civil Rights laws have been a total failure.
The Pauls want to try something different.
Will it work?
No guarantees, for sure…but I have one guarantee for you.
This way has not worked.
WTFU.
Try something else or live with it.
Your choice.
All of our choices.
Check it out.
And then WTFU!!!
AG
“Do the fucking math.”
Learn the basics about how statistics works, Arthur. Citing one set of figures out of context isn’t remotely “math”.
“The Civil Rights laws have been a total failure.”
Ah, if only we had been wise and prudent enough to stick with the Jim Crow system that worked so very, very well and which was so very, very good to black people.
“The Pauls want to try something different.”
Interesting way to describe a fervent desire to go back to the racist past.
“Try something else or live with it.”
Ah yes, the usual, meaningless binary choice so beloved of the Paulites. If the alternatives on offer are (as they seem to be) dishonest, crackpot “libertarianism” i.e. thinly veiled white male privilege and a deranged “understanding” of economics) of the sort Papa and Baby Doc espouse or imperfect, but still somewhat progressive, liberalism, put me down for liberalism any day of the week.
“The Civil Rights laws have been a total failure.”
Careful, AG. Your privilege is showing.
BTW, until you begin to understand that politics, like evolution, is a process, you will continue to sound like a lunatic to most people, including those of us with whom you might otherwise have some common ground.
The Civil Rights Act was not the end of racism, nor was it intended to be. Nor was it anything close to a total failure.
I’ll now go back to ignoring you. Carry on being wrong.
In fact, Rand Paul is very implicit about his take on racism, because you could spend all day unpacking the inherent racism in his views on immigration. There’s the refusal to acknowledge the real reason people come here without documents (to work), the characterization of the people who pick our lettuce as a national security threat, the totally gratuitous demand for English-only laws. I don’t expect you to see it, but you should at least recognize that you’re wasting your time if you think you’re going to convince any liberals to support this asshole.
Then, too, he’s “100% pro-life,” even to the extent of supporting a fetal personhood amendment, and his energy policy, while paying lip service to alternative energy sources, is basically to go all in on fossil fuels.
But yeah, if you don’t give a damn about women, minorities, or the future of the planet, then Rand is your guy.
Arthur is taking full advantage of his white male privilege to dismiss women, minorities, and the meager governmental social safety net programs that we have left in his mega-man-crush on the Pauls. The CPAC darling. Yuck!
Not to mention, that Ron Paul quote isn’t actually very encouraging.
In other words, it’s people like NAACP and La Raza who are the real racists. And anyone who has the effrontery to be bothered by the Pauls’ ties to white supremacists.
Libertarians are the people who treat life as if it were a game of scrabble where only the rules imposed by tyrants prevent you from using the same letters to spell FREEDOM and WHITE PRIVILEGE. Those of us who can count and recognize that a number of crucial letters are missing from that equation not so much.
We can’t divine anything about anyone’s motives, because the claim that someone or something is racist just means that you’re trying to derail the conversation, and you don’t have any facts to make your counterargument, and you’re a big, mean, poopyheaded meanie.
At least, that’s my reading.
Just because the outcome of every policy Rand Paul and his thankfully-departed father advocate reinforces the status quo and buttresses the racist hangover we’ve had since 1866, that doesn’t mean the Pauls are racist clownsticks. Because they didn’t say “nigger” and that’s the only way you can call someone racist anymore in Chaitworld.
As long as Rand talks reel purdy, he can’t be a racist! Q to the E to the motherfuckin’ D, bitches.
Well today I think Booman and you are both wrong.
Oh he’s a Paul supporter? No wonder he’s so long winded.
“Rand Paul and his father before him have been very explicit about their take on racism.”
More accurately, of late, Rand Paul has been very explicit on what he would like you to believe his take on racism might be. Not that anyone with half a brain would actually believe him, given his previous statements, associations and voting record – and that’s before we get into Papa Doc’s own interesting associations and publications.
The good thing about this oh-so-coincidentally synchronized Rand Paul-bashing from the Village is that it might harden the Tea Party’s resolve to make him their candidate of choice.
We can only hope. An HRC-Aqua Buddha presidential campaign would be truly epic.
Remember when Democrats were relieved that the inarticulate doofus knocked out the McCain train in 2000?
+1000. As Lincoln said, “the hen is the wisest of all of the animal creation because she never cackles until the egg is laid.”
Please don’t remind me. I still have horrific flashbacks to that feeling that I must be living a nightmare. Surely, none of these people I know REALLY believe that this moron should be President. And then, he was. And now I find that these same people still believe that “Sarah Palin would have made a wonderful President”.
The nightmare lives on. The zombie is surely not yet dead.
Not really. My recollection of the run-up to 2000 is that most Gore supporters didn’t think McCain would be much of a threat either. Eight years or prosperity, etc etc.
And frankly, they were right – the reasons Gore didn’t become president had nothing to do with the GOP candidate.
Except that discounts the fact that polls had GWB beating Gore until the Democratic convention. While we focus on the drama in FL where Jeb! did steal the election in that state for his little brother, we overlook the fact that GWB beat Gore in NH and WV.
It would help if the Democrats adopted some of his meritorious positions.
It would also help if they could manage to campaign on giving million of people access to health care without apologizing for it. But these ARE the Democrats we’re talking about.
Greater access to health insurance may not translate into greater access to health care. Once all those free and reduced cost public health clinics and hospitals are closed.
Which are? Papa Paul and Pat Buchanan have been on the same page except for the War on Drugs. Baby Paul has distanced himself from Papa on this issue. But he has a shiny new toy — NSA spying on US citizens — to dangle for the Paulistas to keep them in the fold. Too bad everything else he stands for is completely disgusting.
You said it yourself, NSA spying is entirely a meritorious position. Not trying to impose our will militarily all over the world is also a pretty damn good position. There are occasionally a few other positions where his views don’t suck.
None of which means I’d vote for him for president even over Clinton. I won’t be voting for Clinton either, but that has nothing to do with Paul.
But the status quo forces suck, especially on the GOP side. As long as Paul can up end the apple carts, good for him. If he’s treading on Democrat turf, be better Democrats. What I object too is giving the Dems a pass just because as a whole, Rand Paul is a loon. ESPECIALLY when he’s not going to win. In fact it would be better wouldn’t it, lead to a landslide Dem victory?
And why would Booman do that? Unless he’s afraid Paul might win? If so that means the Democrats party is seriously out of whack.
A few (you and I?) don’t give Democrats a pass. But we aren’t nutty enough to view Rand Paul as anything other than from the frying pan into the fire.
Well, of course the Democrats should embrace all meritorious positions. And a stopped clock is right twice a day, but that doesn’t mean it should be president.
I have it on good authority from my acquaintances of a teabaggerish persuasion that stopped clocks do too have a right to be president. It’s in the Constitution!
Can you blame them though? It’s kind of fun.
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bring the fresh