(05/17/10) "Is Rand Paul Good or Bad for Republicans?" (by Jon Lowenstein, Time)

[Spang]

Rand Paul is either the Republican Party's best hope to keep a Senate seat in Kentucky or its worst nightmare.

Here's a little window into why:

"There are Tea Party–like candidates running across the country," notes Paul, who is running for the seat soon to be vacated by Jim Bunning. "Some people say I chastise the Republican Party too much. But I think it'll take an outsider. This is the year to do it. You need someone who will just say no. We could destroy our country with all these deficits. A lot of Republicans have been the problem. It's not all on [President] Obama, though he did make it a lot worse."

Paul, the Bowling Green ophthalmologist whose chief claim to fame is that his father Ron is the world's most famous libertarian, now leads a race he was never supposed to enter. And he leads it by as much as 20 points. In doing so, he is upsetting not only expectations in Kentucky but also overturning the local power structure: he has outraised Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson, the handpicked favorite son of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

And he has done so running nearly as much against the GOP as he has against the Democrats and Obama. Not surprisingly, his campaign is being watched closely by Republicans who worry about the size and strength of the Tea Party movement — and the drain insurgencies like Paul's could have on their coffers.

"The biggest crowds I've been to in Kentucky have been Tea Party crowds. They're two to three times bigger than any Republican crowds," Paul says.

Paul, 47, is not a terribly charismatic speaker, and his political experience consists of filling in for his father on the 2008 campaign trail. If elected, Paul says, he'd work to reduce the deficit, lower taxes, strip the regulatory code and introduce legislation to limit members of Congress and Senators to 12 years in office — a move that would take a constitutional amendment to enforce, but the suggestion is always one of Paul's biggest applause lines. Sarah Palin and Steve Forbes have endorsed him.

After growing up in Surfside, Texas, where his father has been a Congressman on and off for more than 30 years, Paul went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and ophthalmology school at Duke University in North Carolina, and moved to Kentucky in 1993 to be near his wife's parents. He's not charming or debonair, but there's something about his wonky passion for debt and trade imbalances that seems to inspire people. It's easy to find folks who've never attended a political rally at his events, tossing $5 or $10 in the buckets that are usually passed around like a church plate. "I like that he's earnest; I feel like he's being honest with me and not telling me what I want to hear," says Steve Strodtman, a lifelong Republican in the town of Columbia, where some 75 people gathered recently to hear him speak. "I was disappointed with George W. Bush. It's nice to see someone returning the party to its conservative roots."

His success so far has the GOP establishment fighting back. In his ads, Grayson is attempting to paint Paul as a kook whose beliefs are outside the mainstream. Which may explain why on several issues, Paul is edging toward the center: Pure libertarians, he says, believe the market should dictate policy on nearly everything from the environment to health care. Paul has lately said he would not leave abortion to the states, he doesn't believe in legalizing drugs like marijuana and cocaine, he'd support federal drug laws, he'd vote to support Kentucky's coal interests and he'd be tough on national security.

"They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my neck like an albatross, but I'm not a libertarian," Paul says between Lasik surgeries at his medical office, where his campaign is headquartered, with a few desks crammed between treatment rooms. "Frankly, I'd rather be coming from the right than from the left like Grayson, who not too long ago was a Democrat and Bill Clinton supporter." (Grayson voted for Clinton in 1992 before switching parties and entering politics in the mid-1990s.)

Paul's adjustments may leave him vulnerable to a challenge from the right. Bill Johnson, a former naval officer and Tea Party candidate who has poured his life savings — more than $200,000 — into his bid, sees opportunity too. "Grayson's the moderate, establishment candidate, and Paul's got a lot of support from his father's list," Johnson says. "I am the true Tea Party candidate." As with the beverage they are named after, Tea Party Republicans are taking many forms and flavors this year — and could produce many outcomes, some unintended, in the 2010 elections.

The Source (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1972721,00.html)

[Spang]

Rand Paul and His 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Friend

Paul has repeatedly appeared on Alex Jones' radio show and agreed with his dark conspiratorial view of the New World Order.

Rand Paul, after winning the Kentucky Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, has run into reality—that is, the gap between his political and policy positions and mainstream notions. The Tea Party darling hit immediate trouble when he defended holding his victory celebration at a private country club by citing Tiger Woods. More serious, appearing on Rachel Maddow's show, Paul noted that he would not have fully endorsed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That is because he doesn't support the government infringing upon property rights—such as the right of a business owner to discriminate on the basis of race.

Paul, like his father Ron (the libertarian Republican congressman), fancies himself a strict constitutionalist opposed to globalists and what he and others in the so-called "Patriot movement" call the New World Order. And this view of politics has led Paul to keep unusual company—such as his appearances on the radio show of Alex Jones, an anti-government conspiracy theorist and one of the more prominent proponents of the idea that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

Jones, who sees big government conspiracies elsewhere, as well, has been an enthusiastic supporter of both Ron and Rand Paul. Both men have appeared on his show, which, of course, doesn't mean they endorse his 9/11 views and other opinions. (Last December, Rand Paul's campaign communications director, Chris Hightower, resigned after a blogger exposed Hightower as an anti-Christian who believed that the US government was responsible for 9/11. The Paul campaign, asked by a local newspaper, if Paul agreed with Hightower on 9/11, said it was a "complicated situation" with "truth on both sides.") But Rand Paul has shown sympathy for Jones' overall view of a world of global conspiracies, and he has expressed support for some of Jones' unconventional ideas.

During a July 23, 2009 show, Jones, decrying the Wall Street bailout, asked Paul, "This isn't really socialism….Isn't this more akin to fascism?" Paul replied, "You're exactly right." Later on the show, while Jones was denouncing cap-and-trade legislation (which he says could lead to "toilet paper taxes") and calling for investigating Al Gore, Paul noted that should the climate bill become law, "we will have an army of armed EPA agents--thousands of them." These EPA troopers, according to Paul, would be free to burst into homes and apartments to determine if they were meeting energy-efficiency standards.

Paul also didn't say anything when Jones raised an odd charge about the Federal Reserve. During a rant about the Fed, Jones claimed "we know that the Federal Reserve was clearly implicated in the kidnapping of a congressman's baby" and commended Paul for his "courage" in taking on the Fed. Paul replied, "I appreciate that," and he told Jones that he could not mount his Senate run "without you."

Throughout this particular show, Paul graciously accepted Jones' support for his pending Senate candidacy. He gave the impression that he and Jones were like-minded foes of the globalists and international financiers plotting to undermine, if not destroy, the United States for their own gain. And Paul noted that career politicians are no match for this enemy force: "the ones that evolve to the top of the Republican and the Democratic Party end up being the people who don't believe in anything…and they get pushed around by the New World Order types."

A month later, Paul was again a guest on Jones' show. "I can't stress enough how important this race for the Kentucky senator is," Jones exclaimed. Paul replied, "You're right."

The Source (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/rand-paul-and-his-911-conspiracy-theorist-friend)

[Spang]

Part 1

Part 2

[Spang]

Who’s Afraid of Rand Paul?

Tuesday’s election results were pretty good for progressives. The retirement of that windbag chameleon Sen. Arlen Specter is long overdue, and pro-labor forces were able to push Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a runoff in Arkansas. Even the big tea party win in Kentucky has its bright side.

Count me as one lefty liberal who is not the least bit unhappy with the victory by Rand Paul in Kentucky’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. Not because it might make it easier for some Democratic Party hack to win in the general, but rather because he seems to be a principled libertarian in the mold of his father, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and we need more of that impulse in the Congress. What’s wrong with cutting back big government that mostly exists to serve the interests of big corporations? Surely it would be better if that challenge came from populist progressives of the left, in the Bernie Sanders mold, but this is Kentucky we’re talking about.

Rand Paul, like his dad, is worthy of praise for standing in opposition to the Wall Street bailout, which will come to be marked as the greatest swindle in U.S. history and which was, as he noted on his website, an unconstitutional redistribution of income in favor of the undeserving rich:

“Federal bailouts reward inefficient and corrupt management, rob taxpayers, hurt smaller and more responsible private firms, exacerbate our budget problems, explode national debt, and destroy our U.S. dollar. Even more importantly, any bailout of private industry is in direct violation of the Constitution. It is a transfer of wealth from those who have earned to those who have squandered.”

Of course the joker in the deck is the word principled before libertarian, and, as many online commentators have noted, Rand Paul is a bit more inclined to waffle on an interventionist foreign policy than is his father. While he would have insisted on a declaration of war before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, he argues that Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attack was planned, was a legitimate target but that Iraq was not. In either case, as he insists correctly, a congressional declaration of war was constitutionally required:

“If I had been in the U.S. Senate I would have stopped them and said no more, we will have a vote. We will declare war with Afghanistan. We will declare war with Iraq. I would have voted for a declaration of war with Afghanistan but I would have voted against a declaration of war with Iraq. But I would have made them vote. And that’s the problem, they no longer pay attention to the rules.”

In any case, his Republican establishment opponent, Trey Grayson, attacked Paul for his opposition to an interventionist foreign policy as well as for favoring the legalization of marijuana, and on both counts it is a good sign that Kentucky voters rejected those lines of attack.

True, to wax warmly about a potential Republican libertarian senator is an act of desperation for a liberal who still hopes that the federal government might be moved by the embattled band of progressive Democrats in Congress to put the power of the federal government at the service of the needy. But when has that happened recently? With a commanding Democratic majority in Congress and a former community organizer as president, the focus of economic policy in this time of enormous economic pain has been on saving the bankers who created this mess.

With the Democrats trusting our well-being to the likes of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who under President Bill Clinton did so much to enable Wall Street greed, would it not be good to have at least one Republican senator questioning the Washington spending spree? Yes, Rand Paul is bad on a lot of social issues I care about, and no, I don’t embrace his faith in the social compassion of unfettered free markets. But the alternative we have experienced is not one of a progressive government properly restraining free-market greed but rather, as was amply demonstrated in the pretend regulation of the oil industry, of government as a partner in corporate crime. It is the power of the corporate lobbyists that is at issue, and it is refreshing that candidate Paul has labeled Washington lobbyists a “distinctly criminal class” and favors a ban on lobbying and campaign contributions by those who hold more than a million dollars in federal contracts.

Heresy, I know, but it is only thanks to Ron Paul, the father and hopefully the mentor of the potential Kentucky senator, that we got a congressional mandate to audit the Fed’s role in the banking bailout. How bad could it be to have another irascible Paul in the Congress?

The Source (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/whos_afraid_of_rand_paul_20100518/)

[Spang]

Rand Paul is No Barry Goldwater on Civil Rights

Rand Paul, son of legendary libertarian Congressman Ron Paul, for whom I worked in the 1970s, is now the official Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Perhaps unfortunately for him, he did not get a great deal of national press scrutiny during his primary campaign because he was an outsider that many in the national press corps thought could not win. Now that he has, they are making up for lost time. And Rand has accommodated them by repeatedly saying that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds: private businesses should not be forced to serve African Americans if they so choose. Presumably, market pressure will eventually force them to be more accommodating. If it doesn't, then so be it, Rand believes.

Both Rand's supporters and critics point to Senator Barry Goldwater's principled opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, according to Rick Perlstein's excellent book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act was based entirely on constitutional concerns. He had been told by both William Rehnquist, then a private attorney in Phoenix and later chief justice of the Supreme Court, and Robert Bork, then a professor of constitutional law at Yale, that it was unconstitutional. Bork even sent him a 75-page brief to that effect.

To be sure, the Rehnquist-Bork position was not a lame rationalization for racism. It was rooted in the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 essentially replicated the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was enacted by a Republican Congress over strenuous Democratic opposition. However, in 1883 the Supreme Court, then it its most libertarian phase, knocked down the 1875 act as well as many other Republican measures passed during Reconstruction designed to aid African Americans. The Court's philosophy in these cases led logically to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which essentially gave constitutional protection to legal segregation enforced by state and local governments throughout the U.S.

As we know from history, the free market did not lead to a breakdown of segregation. Indeed, it got much worse, not just because it was enforced by law but because it was mandated by self-reinforcing societal pressure. Any store owner in the South who chose to serve blacks would certainly have lost far more business among whites than he gained. There is no reason to believe that this system wouldn't have perpetuated itself absent outside pressure for change.

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color. The gains made by the former slaves in the years after the Civil War were completely reversed once the Supreme Court effectively prevented the federal government from protecting them. Thus we have a perfect test of the libertarian philosophy and an indisputable conclusion: it didn't work. Freedom did not lead to a decline in racism; it only got worse.

Sadly, it took the Supreme Court more than 50 years after Plessy before it began to undo its mistake in Brown. This led to repeated efforts by the Eisenhower administration to enact civil rights legislation, which was opposed and gutted by Senate Democrats led by Lyndon Johnson. But by 1964, it was clear to Johnson that the tide had turned. The federal courts were moving to dismantle segregation to the extent they could, and the 1963 March on Washington, the murder and beating of civil rights demonstrators in the South and growing awareness of such atrocities changed the political climate and made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 possible--despite the filibuster against it by Senator Robert C. Byrd, who still serves in the Senate today.

If Rand Paul were saying that he agrees with the Goldwater-Rehnquist-Bork view that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was unconstitutional and that the Supreme Court was wrong to subsequently find it constitutional, that would be an eccentric but defensible position. If he were saying that the Civil Rights Act were no longer necessary because of the great strides we have made as a country in eradicating racism, that would also be defensible. But Rand's position is that it was wrong in principle in 1964. There is no other way of interpreting this except as an endorsement of all the things the Civil Rights Act was designed to prohibit, as favoring the status quo throughout the South that would have led to a continuation of segregation and discrimination against African Americans at least for many more years. Undoubtedly, changing mores would have broken down some of this over time, but there is no reason to believe that it would have been quick or that vestiges wouldn't still remain today. Indeed, vestiges remain despite the Civil Rights Act.

I don't believe Rand is a racist; I think he is a fool who is suffering from the foolish consistency syndrome that affects all libertarians. They believe that freedom consists of one thing and one thing only--freedom from governmental constraint. Therefore, it is illogical to them that any increase in government power could ever expand freedom. Yet it is clear that African Americans were far from free in 1964 and that the Civil Rights Act greatly expanded their freedom while diminishing that of racists. To defend the rights of racists to discriminate is reprehensible and especially so when it is done by a major party nominee for the U.S. Senate. I believe that Rand should admit that he was wrong as quickly as possible.

The Source (http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1734/rand-paul-no-barry-goldwater-civil-rights)

[Suzan]

“Federal bailouts reward inefficient and corrupt management, rob taxpayers, hurt smaller and more responsible private firms, exacerbate our budget problems, explode national debt, and destroy our U.S. dollar. Even more importantly, any bailout of private industry is in direct violation of the Constitution. It is a transfer of wealth from those who have earned to those who have squandered.”

I like his take on the bailouts.

[Suzan]

Rand Paul, son of legendary libertarian Congressman Ron Paul, for whom I worked in the 1970s, is now the official Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Perhaps unfortunately for him, he did not get a great deal of national press scrutiny during his primary campaign because he was an outsider that many in the national press corps thought could not win. Now that he has, they are making up for lost time. And Rand has accommodated them by repeatedly saying that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds: private businesses should not be forced to serve African Americans if they so choose. Presumably, market pressure will eventually force them to be more accommodating. If it doesn't, then so be it, Rand believes.

No, I don't agree with him here. Not everything can be left to the market to correct, like ... our civil rights, for heaven's sake.

[Spang]

Rand Paul may not be a racist, but he is an extremist

It's safe to say Rand Paul's first few days as the Republican nominee for the open Senate seat in Kentucky are not going well. When you can't answer the question "Should [the] Woolworth lunch counter have been allowed to stay segregated? Sir, just yes or no," it's fair to say you're off-message.

Over at Right Now, Dave Weigel offers up the generous and, I think, correct interpretation of Paul's opposition to the parts of the Civil Rights Act that desegregated private businesses. "Paul believes, as many conservatives believe, that the government should ban bias in all of its institutions but cannot intervene in the policies of private businesses." And Weigel is right that this is not an unknown belief among conservatives: I've had this argument with some of my libertarian friends, and libertarians occasionally have this argument among one another.

So I take Paul at his word that he's not a racist. What he is, however, is an ideological extremist. He is so categorically opposed to public regulation of private enterprise that he cannot even bring himself to say that the Woolworth lunch counter should've been desegregated. Instead, he falls back on the remedies of the market: "I wouldn't attend, wouldn't support, wouldn't go to," a private institution that discriminates, he told Rachel Maddow. But he would let them discriminate. And in the segregated South, that would've been a perfectly viable business model for many, many very important institutions.

"I think what you've done is you bring up something that really is not an issue," Paul said to Maddow, "nothing I've ever spoken about or have any indication that I'm interested in any legislation concerning." That's actually wrong: Paul isn't likely to get the chance to modify Title IX of the Civil Rights Act anytime soon. But he will have to vote on quite a bit of legislation that uses the commerce clause to regulate private businesses. And that's why this matters.

Paul's defense of himself is that his take on the Civil Rights Act has nothing to do with race and so he is not a racist. But by the same token, the fact that Paul's view on the Civil Rights Act is so dominated by his libertarian ideology that he cannot even admit race and segregation into the calculus is exactly why this is relevant to Paul's candidacy, why it's an issue and why it's among the best evidence we have in understanding how he'll vote on legislation that comes before him. If this isn't about race, then it is about all questions relating to federal regulation of private enterprise. As a senator, Paul will be faced with that question frequently. And his views on it are clearly very, very far from the mainstream.

The Source (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/05/rand_paul_may_not_be_a_racist.html)

[foxyladi]

lets give him a chance:D

[RichardMZhlubb]

So, if he doesn't think that the government should be telling private companies how to run their businesses, does he oppose child labor laws? OSHA and other workplace safety laws? Overtime laws?

[Spang]

Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin'

Here's another wrinkle in the controversy over U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul's arguments, made Wednesday to NPR and Rachel Maddow, over whether the Civil Rights Act was necessary to prevent discrimination.

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul's hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin." (Hat tip: Page One Kentucky. I have purchased the letter from the newspaper's online archives, but will not post it here out of respect for the copyright.)

"The Daily News ignores," wrote Paul, "as does the Fair Housing Act, the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual's beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn't want noisy children? Absolutely not."

In language similar to the language he's used talking about the Civil Rights Act, Paul criticized racism while defending the right of businesses to discriminate.

"A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination," wrote Paul, "even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin. It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin. It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities."

Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Paul, cautioned that Paul's statements about federal laws in no way mean he's interested in repealing laws that prevent discrimination.

"The federal government has the power under the Civil Rights Act to make sure citizens don't discriminate on race," said Benton. "He's not going to repeal it. The only people who are talking about changes to civil rights legislation are people on the left are people who want to use this as a political attack tool. Not any serious people talking about policy."

The Source (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_in_2002_i_may_not_li.html)

[Spang]

Paul: 'News cycle has gotten out of control'

(CNN) - Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, facing withering criticism for questioning elements of the Civil Rights Act, lamented the state of the media Thursday when asked about the tempest swirling around his remarks.

"I thought I was supposed to get a honeymoon," Paul sighed in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "When does my honeymoon start after my victory?"

In an appearance on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Wednesday night, Paul debated whether the landmark federal anti-discrimination legislation should apply to private businesses – unleashing a torrent of attacks from national Democrats eager to undercut his candidacy two days after he secured the GOP nomination.

Paul said in the CNN interview Thursday that MSNBC, taking cues from his Democratic opponent Jack Conway, had mistakenly reported that he supports a "repeal" of the Civil Rights Act.

"I think what troubles me is that the news cycle has gotten out of control," he told Blitzer. "For several hours on a major news network yesterday, they reported repeatedly that I was for repealing the Civil Rights Act. That is not only not true, never been my position, but is an out and out lie. And they repeated it all day long."

Nevertheless, Paul sought to walk back his explosive comments.

He said he would have voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act if he were in the Senate at the time, calling the racial climate at the time "a stain on the South and our history."

"There was an overriding problem in the South that was so big that it did require federal intervention in the Sixties," he said. "The Southern states weren't correcting it, and there was a need for federal intervention."

Paul, though, would not say if he would have voted for the Americans with Disabilities Act. He wondered if a private businesses should be "forced to put in a $100,000 elevator" for a disabled employee, for example.

"I think sometimes when we have a federal solution, we have a one-size-fit-all, and that we recognize the problem, which I do also, of someone who is handicapped," he said. "But then we don't take into consideration at all the business owner or the property owner. So I think it's a balancing act."

The Source (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/20/paul-news-cycle-has-gotten-out-of-control/?fbid=yiKd9O_u_**)

[Suzan]

He said he would have voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act if he were in the Senate at the time, calling the racial climate at the time "a stain on the South and our history."

"There was an overriding problem in the South that was so big that it did require federal intervention in the Sixties," he said. "The Southern states weren't correcting it, and there was a need for federal intervention."

Okay, he cleaned this up.

Paul, though, would not say if he would have voted for the Americans with Disabilities Act. He wondered if a private businesses should be "forced to put in a $100,000 elevator" for a disabled employee, for example.

"I think sometimes when we have a federal solution, we have a one-size-fit-all, and that we recognize the problem, which I do also, of someone who is handicapped," he said. "But then we don't take into consideration at all the business owner or the property owner. So I think it's a balancing act."

I don't disagree with him here. It really does depend on the situation. Everything possible needs to be done to accommodate the handicapped, but for some very small businesses a $100,000 elevator could wipe them out.

[spikeytx86]

Okay, he cleaned this up.



I don't disagree with him here. It really does depend on the situation. Everything possible needs to be done to accommodate the handicapped, but for some very small businesses, a $100,000 elevator could wipe them out.
I agree on the ADA, it should be modified to relieve very small and small businesses from onerous regulations.

[foxyladi]

just like rest some i agree somethings i don't:D

[Spang]

(No Nudity)

[Spang]

Rand Paul Cancels On 'Meet The Press,' Only 3rd Guest To Do So In 62 Years

Following a week of unsparingly critical press coverage, Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is now seeking to limit his national exposure.

A spokesperson for the Tea Party-endorsed candidate informed NBC News late Friday afternoon that an exhausted Paul was canceling his interview on Sunday's "Meet the Press," Betsy Fischer, the executive producer for the program, told the Huffington Post.

"We booked him on Wednesday. Everything was set and then his press person emailed this afternoon that he was very sorry but he wants to cancel the interview. We tried appealing to the press person to not much avail," Fischer said.

Both Fischer and host David Gregory have since sent direct appeals to Paul's campaign manager to talk to the candidate over the phone with the goal of getting him to reverse his decision. But it appears the Paul camp isn't budging.

"Rand did Good Morning America today, set the record straight, and now we are done talking about it," Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton told the Washington Post. "No more national interviews on the topic."

If Paul were to follow through on his decision to not appear on "Meet the Press" it would be, as Fischer describes it, "a big deal." There have been only two other guests in the program's 62-year history to have canceled last minute: Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

"Meet the Press" had scored a major victory in booking Paul for its program. The Republican Senate candidate emerged as the face of the Tea Party movement following his primary victory Tuesday night. Since then, he's been surrounded by intrigue and controversy after having expressed skepticism about the reach of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Story continues below

Much of critical coverage came after Paul appeared on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" -- an interview he said subsequently was "mistake." Asked whether she believed Maddow's sit-down played a role in Paul canceling on "Meet the Press," Fischer said she did not.

"Obviously he has had a very tough week I think he has just had a long week and seems to not want to talk any more or keep his commitment," she said.

The Source (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/21/rand-paul-cancels-on-meet_n_585460.html)

[Spang]

Rand Paul: "Principled Libertarian"? Not.

I’m guessing Robert Scheer wrote his Truthout piece praising Rand Paul as "a principled libertarian in the mold of his father, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas ("we need more of that impulse in the Congress") before the media firestorm over Paul’s long-standing and not-exactly-secret opposition to the l964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act. Although Paul now says that he believes Congress was right to bar segregation in private businesses, his original position is what you’d expect from someone who basically believes private-property rights and business interests trump all and the market will fix any pesky problems. Ergo, Barack Obama is “un-American” to criticize BP for the oil spill in the gulf . On Good Morning, America, Paul dismissed the recent deaths of two miners in a collapse at non-union Kentucky mine that had received 840 safety citations in the past year: 'Maybe sometimes accidents happen." So much for the anti-corporate rhetoric Scheer admires in Paul.

As a libertarian, Paul theoretically wants to limit the government’s power to do very much of anything -- so it's not surprising that his views coincide with those of Scheer and other progressives on a few items, like the Iraq War, bank bailouts, and the Patriot Act. There’s one area, though, in which Paul apparently wants the government to play a much bigger role: your womb. Women can forget about the “privacy’ and “liberty” Paul touts on his website; warnings against government encroachment on freedom do not apply to female citizens of Paul’s back-to-basics Republic. As per his website, we get the Human Life amendment banning all abortion even for rape and incest, “a Sanctity of Life Amendment, establishing the principle that life begins at conception,” a funding ban on Planned parenthood, and a ban on the Supreme court taking up abortion-related cases. No wonder he's been endorsed by Operation Rescue founder and general all-around sleazemeister Randall Terry.

As with many of Paul’s statements and positions, you wonder if he’s thought about them for more than two minutes. How, after all, is a ban on abortion to be implemented except by a massive government intrusion into private and personal behavior? To say nothing of monitoring thousands of medical practices, clinics, hospitals and pharmacies --apparently the only businesses Paul would want to put under government oversight.

In countries where abortion bans are taken seriously, the prospect of performing even the most medically necessary abortion terrifies doctors and hospitals. Law enforcement treats miscarriages as possible crimes. Women and doctors go to prison. How does a police officer showing up at a patient’s hospital bed to question her as a possible murderer, with a mandatory investigation of the premises of the alleged crime – her ****** and uterus -- square with libertarianism? Like his support for increased Medicaid payment to physicians, a profession he just happens to follow, the exceptions to Rand’s libertarianism miraculously track his own preferences. Somehow the market, which is supposed to miraculously produce food that doesn’t poison you, cars that don’t explode, oil wells that don’t pollute and mines that don’t collapse, is useless when it comes to forcing women to stay pregnant against their will and making sure doctors make plenty of money.

I’ve always thought libertarianism was juvenile. Thanks to Rand Paul—and contrary to Scheer -- I know now it’s also unprincipled.

The Source (http://www.thenation.com/blog/rand-paul-principled-libertarian-not-0)

[Spang]

The Rand Paul Litmus Test

Democratic candidates are looking to capitalize on Kentucky Republican Rand Paul’s disastrous entrée into the national spotlight, attempting to link their Republican opponents with Paul's ideological extremism. In North Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Elaine Marshall has sent an email asking "True or False…Republican Sen. Richard Burr agrees with fellow Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that ended racial segregation.”

The reader has to click through the post in order to get an answer—and, as it turns out, Burr doesn’t seem to have commented on Paul’s controversial remarks. Noting that Burr has promised voters “it is impossible for any candidate to get to the right” of him, the campaign urges Marshall supporters to sign a petition to “force him on the record!”

Though Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans have tried to distance themselves from Paul, Democrats like Marshall are hoping to paint him as a symptom of the party’s rightward shift. Marshall is facing her own primary contest in North Carolina, where she’s competing in a run-off election against Cal Cunningham, the choice of the national Democratic establishment. Having portrayed herself as an unapologetic progressive, Marshall could conceivably benefit from being seen as a foe of Republican extremism. But whether Marshall--or other Democrats outside of Kentucky--will see much benefit from Paul’s running mouth remains to be seen.

The Source (http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/rand-paul-litmus-test)

[Spang]

Why Rand Paul Is Right … and Wrong

The new GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky would be wrong to oppose the 1964 civil-rights law, but his underlying concern was legitimate.

You'd expect a man who'd just won his party's primary in Kentucky's race for the U.S. Senate to be beaming. But on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program Wednesday evening, Rand Paul looked like someone had slipped sour milk in his tea, as the progressive host slow-roasted him over his numerousstatements supporting the right of private businesses to discriminate, and expressing qualms about the provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bars segregation in privately owned places of "public accommodation."

Paul took pains to stress his personal revulsion for racism and his support for a ban on institutional, government-supported segregation. But in a scene from a campaign adviser's nightmare, he queasily stuck to the view that due respect for the rights of property—whether that property is a home or a business—means letting bigoted owners exclude whom they please. He would soon tell conservative talker Laura Ingraham what he conspicuously avoided saying during that long, uncomfortable Maddow interview: that he would in fact have voted for the '64 Civil Rights Act, and had no wish to change it now.

Still, it's worth considering what's right and wrong with version 1.0 of Paul's view, which John Stossel endorsed on Fox News on Thursday. Is it racist, as intimated by so many of the bloggers and Twitterati who've made the Maddow clip viral? Is it wrong? And if it's wrong, what's wrong with it?

There's no doubt the libertarian argument, springing from the sanctity of private property, was adopted by bigots looking for respectable cover—and the line between them has not always been as sharp as this libertarian writer would like. Rand's father, libertarian icon Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), caught his share of flak over racially incendiary statements that appeared for years in his newsletter. Ron Paul didn't pen such gems as the suggestion that a group of black protesters hold their demonstration "at a food stamp bureau or a crack house" rather than the Statue of Liberty. But he had unwisely lent his name to a clique of libertarian writers whose misbegotten strategy was to rally the white working class against "big government" by exploiting resentment of the "parasitic Underclass."

Yet there's nothing intrinsically racist in the argument in favor of property rights—and indeed, any real liberal ought to at least have some sympathy for it. Strong property rights have often been the friend of unpopular minorities: Jim Crow laws were imposed precisely because racists feared the South's rigid caste system would collapse if business owners were free to integrate, as historian Charles Wynes noted in his 1961 study Race Relations in Virginia. After that long apartheid imposed on consumer preferences, it might have been too sanguine to hope market forces alone would have ushered in desegregation as rapidly as the Civil Rights Act did. But history is littered with tribal boundaries shattered by commerce, and formal law yielded no instant solution either. (A ban on formal segregation could only do so much in practice where majorities were determined to exclude blacks by means less explicit but barely more subtle than signs announcing "whites only.")

Anyone who values freedom of association should also recognize the real tradeoff that antidiscrimination law involves. In a free society, Americans have long believed, even people with repulsive views have a right to express them, and to join with like-minded bigots in private clubs and informal gatherings. It is not crazy to imagine that in a more just world, an ideally just world, respect for that freedom would lead us to countenance—legally, if not personally—the few cranks who sought to congregate in their monochrome cafés and diners.

Yet that's precisely why Paul's 1.0 argument breaks down on its own terms: at the scene of a four-century crime against humanity—the kidnap, torture, enslavement, and legal oppression of African-Americans—ideal theory fails. We libertarians, never burdened with an excess of governing power, have always had a utopian streak, a penchant for imagining what rich organic order would bubble up from the choices of free and equal citizens governed by a lean state enforcing a few simple rules. We tend to envision societies that, if not perfect, are at least consistently libertarian.

Unfortunately, history happened. Rules for utopia can deal with individual crimes—the mugger and the killer and the vandal—but they stumble in the face of societywide injustice. They tell us the state shouldn't sanction the brutal enslavement or humiliating legal subordination of a people; they have less to say about what to do once we have. They tell us to respect the sanctity of the property rights that would arise as free people tamed the wilderness in John Locke's state of nature. They have less to say about the sanctity of property built on generations of slave sweat and blood.

Libertarians need to think harder about how our principles should degrade elegantly, how they can guide us through a fallen world where the live political options seldom afford a full escape from injustice. Rand Paul's 2.0 view (which came out during his interview with Ingraham) suggests a shift toward just this sort of approach. How far it could be extended to other forms of discrimination—against the disabled, the elderly, women, gays—should be determined not by a blanket assumption that government can always restrict associational rights in the name of equality, but by a fact-intensive, case-by-case inquiry that factors in both the state's past complicity in depriving groups of their rights and the extent to which those groups would in practice be systematically denied equal participation in society absent state correction. And in each case, the ultimate goal of regulation should be to render itself unnecessary.

Liberals and progressives, for their part, should also reconsider whether the civil-rights era's expansion of federal power ought to be seen as a norm or an exception. Faced with the enormities of history, a unanimous Supreme Court stretched the constitutional power of Congress over interstate commerce to permit an attempt at a remedy. But if we recognize the circumstances of the time as exceptional—as the exigencies of war are exceptional when we consider the scope of executive power—we should be less eager to make it the basis of a general federal license to pursue any attractive end through the commerce power. At the dawn of the 20th century, we assumed that federal prohibition of alcohol could only be accomplished by constitutional amendment. With the exception of U.S. v. Lopez, a 1990s hiccup where the court failed to find a sufficient nexus between interstate commerce and carrying handguns near schools—we now take for granted that the interstate-commerce power constitutes a blank check, not just when Congress seeks to rectify gross historical iniquity, but for such purposes as overriding state decisions to permit local cultivation of medical marijuana.

The central fact obscured by our polarized political discourse is that Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul don't inhabit completely alien moral worlds. The value of free association, in commercial as well as private life, is and ought to be a liberal value. The call for justice from victims of a criminal state should ring in libertarian ears. Both should hope to see a better world, where bigots' desire to gather together in their own sterile haunts could be not only tolerated but positively welcomed as a favor to the rest of us.

The Source (http://www.newsweek.com/id/238323/page/1)

[Spang]

Rand Paul's Libertarian La-La Land

Not so fast, everybody. Rand Paul can't abruptly disavow the extremist views on civil rights that he's been espousing for years and expect us all to just move along. Was he lying then? Is he lying now? Or has the Tea Party movement's newly crowned Mad Hatter changed his mind?

Republican crisis managers wisely didn't allow Paul to stray within range of the Sunday talk shows, but they can't keep him hidden away in some Kentucky cave until November. Sooner or later, the Senate candidate is going to have to answer a direct question: Was he being untruthful on the occasions when he said the federal government has no authority to outlaw racial discrimination in private businesses such as restaurants? Or is he being untruthful now in claiming he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Actually, there are quite a few direct questions that Paul will be asked. Does he still believe it ought to be permissible to deny Americans access to housing because of the color of their skin, as he argued a few years ago? I have a personal stake in this one, since I live in a neighborhood where a legal covenant once kept African Americans out. Is this sort of thing cool with him?

I'd also like to know whether Paul really believes in a conspiracy among the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments to turn North America into a "borderless, mass continent" bisected by a 10-lane superhighway. Because that's what he said in 2008.

"It's a real thing," he said of the imaginary threat to U.S. sovereignty, "and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut."

Very little paint is needed.

And while we're at it, what about Paul's recent analysis of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? The Obama administration faces growing criticism for not being tough enough on BP for its failure to stop the gushing flow of crude that is fouling Louisiana's ecologically sensitive coastal marshes. Paul, however, sees things differently. "What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,' " Paul said. "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

The "un-American" part is consistent with the campaign by Republican cynics and Tea Party wing nuts to delegitimize Obama's presidency. But the general idea -- that it's wrong to hold private firms strictly accountable for disasters such as the gulf spill -- appears to be something that Paul really believes, since he also dismisses the recent West Virginia mine explosion in which 29 miners were killed.

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic," he said. "Then we come in, and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

But maybe accidents are less likely to happen when appropriate safety standards are established and enforced. This kind of cause-and-effect reasoning is meaningful only to those who live in the real world, however. From all evidence, Paul lives in Libertarian La-La Land, where a purist philosophy leads people to believe in the purest nonsense.

Now that he is running for the Senate as a card-carrying Republican, Paul is going to have to abandon, or pretend to abandon, many of his loopy beliefs. This won't be easy, as illustrated by the hemming and hawing he did before finally endorsing the Civil Rights Act. Even then, he suggested that the law was justified only by the prevailing situation in the South. As soon as Paul is allowed out of his cave, someone should ask him whether the landmark legislation properly applies to the rest of the country.

Sarah Palin accused reporters of practicing "gotcha" journalism in seeking to elicit Paul's views. As we know from the 2008 campaign, Palin's definition of a "gotcha" interview is one in which actual questions are asked. But think about it: Did anyone imagine that the Republican Party could field a candidate who makes Sarah Barracuda sound like the voice of reason?

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele wouldn't have been eligible to move to my neighborhood, either, if Paul's view had prevailed. On Sunday, Steele ventured that Paul's philosophy is "misplaced in these times" -- but also said he "can't condemn" it.

That's pathetic, Chairman Mike. Rand Paul can't have it both ways. Neither can the GOP, and neither can you.

The writer will be online to chat with readers at 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

The Source (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052402991.html)

[Spang]

Ron and Rand Paul: Like Father, Like Son

Given Ron Paul’s sordid history regarding race relations in America, particularly the derogatory statements about African-Americans published in his longtime newsletter, it’s not surprising that his son, Rand, upon winning the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky, immediately said that he didn’t agree with the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Since Rand is close to his father and shares the same paleoconservative libertarian philosophy, it’s worth further exploring Ron Paul’s views on these questions and whether his son agrees with them. While running for president in 2007, Paul was asked by Iowa radio host Dennis Raimondi whether he supported the federal government’s desegregation of public schools, a key part of the Civil Rights Act. “How would you have handled that as a person who believes in the federal government not getting too involved in the states?” Raimondi asked.

The short answer is that Paul opposed the Civil Rights Act. But here’s his lengthy reply:

"Yes, I would prefer that the states take care of this, as that’s the way that’s under the Constitution that we should do it. But back then we had the states doing the wrong thing. If your were in a neighborhood they would deliberately bus you out of the neighborhood in order to perform segregation and that was wrong. But the answer that they gave us was now they literally bus people in to promote integration and you should do neither. You should just have community schools and you shouldn’t have separate schools. But this whole idea that you can have perfections through government regulation by first busing people out and then busing people in—in a free society it is not a problem at all because parents are responsible for education and its either home school or private school. We’ve never really had that, we’ve always had public schools that were run locally, so if there are imperfections in the system it has to be dealt with by the people themselves as well as the school boards, but back in those days when there was segregation that was done by government so you blame all those problems on government and you just need to clean that mess up but not with the federal government under the constitution."

Paul seems to be saying that if schools were run locally there wouldn't have been segregation and that if America was truly free parents would either home school their kids or send them to private school. Both claims boggle the mind. Is Paul saying there is no role for public education in a free society? Does Rand agree with that?

There’s a lot more questions that need to be asked and answered—about Rand Paul’s beliefs and that of the Tea Party movement that has so enthusiastically embraced him—before the campaign is over.

The Source (http://www.thenation.com/blog/ron-and-rand-paul-father-son)

[Spang]

Rand Paul replaces campaign manager

Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul has reshuffled staff and replaced campaign manager David Adams in the wake of last week's Civil Rights Act blow-up. The new campaign manager: Jesse Benton, the communications director for Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Tex.) 2008 presidential bid who's done substantial work in that capacity for the younger Paul.

"I'm the new campaign manager in title, but this isn't a campaign shake-up," said Benton. "David Adams isn't being pushed out in any way. This is just a change in roles. I was just a general consultant, but I'll be taking the official title -- David will become campaign chairman. He'll be Rand's key liaison to groups here in Kentucky."

The Kentucky political blog Barefoot & Progressive has some background and gets an important detail right -- Benton was once controversial among supporters of Ron Paul, who were confused and angry about how their $35 million in campaign donations led to loss after loss in the presidential primaries. But Benton, who married one of Ron Paul's granddaughters in 2008, relocated to Texas and stayed within the Paul sphere, winning back respect with supporters as Paul's public appearances surged in 2009. (In retrospect, many Paul fans blame 2008 campaign manager Lew Moore for the presidential operations blunders.)

The Source (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_replaces_campaign_ma.html)

[Spang]

Meet Rand Paul's New Campaign Manager

Kentucy's GOP senate candidate Rand Paul has reshuffled his campaign team in the wake of last week's Civil Rights Act imbroglio. Former campaign manager David Adams has been replaced in that role by Jesse Benton, who also served as spokesman in 2008 for Paul's father, then GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul. I had occasion to interact with Benton that year for a feature I wrote on Paul's campaign and followers. Though "interact" is probably too expansive a term. Benton steadfastly refused to comment (with one small exception) or make Paul available, even though my feature was far from hostile to Paul. His reasoning was that somebody in the campaign had dealt with Mother Jones in the past and had decided we weren't to be trusted.

Benton's approach struck me as odd, given that Paul portrayed himself as a different kind of politician, someone who wasn't stage managed or afraid of telling voters what he really believed. And Benton's policy wasn't reserved for Mother Jones. When I wrote a profile of Paul for Duke Magazine, the alumni magazine of Paul's alma mater, Benton also denied me access.

Benton's restrictive approach makes sense, of course, in the context of Rand Paul's missteps on the Rachael Maddow show last week. My bet is that Rand Paul will now do his best to steer clear of reporters who are likely to pose unfomfortable questions.

The Source (http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/meet-rand-pauls-new-campaign-manager?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28Mot herJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29)

[Spang]

Rand Paul Endorses Obviously Unconstitutional Plan To End Birthright Citizenship

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is best known for radical anti-government views that lead him to oppose the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, while claiming that governmental criticism of BP is “un-American.” Yet Paul’s hatred of all things government appears to end at the border. In an interview with a Russian television station, Paul calls for expansive levels of surveillance and unconstitutional attacks on Americans’ citizenship:

I recently have been talking more about satellite observation. They say you can sit in front of the store here and a satellite can read the headline on your newspaper. So I think you could also monitor your border with satellites, and then you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come in illegally. You could have helicopters stations positioned every couple of hundred miles. . .

We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally have a baby and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.

(No Nudity)

It’s a bit amusing to see a self-described libertarian call for satellite-directed helicopter brigades to sweep down upon anyone who wanders too close to America’s southern border. It is not clear why Paul insists upon using wildly-expensive spy satellites to monitor the border when cheaper technology exists. But Paul’s call to end birthright citizenship, however, is by far the most radical aspect of his immigration plan because it conflicts with the express language of the Constitution.

Under the 14th Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This language is unambiguous; it grants citizenship to all persons born in the US unless they are not subject to American “jurisdiction” — a very narrow exception that applies only to children of foreign diplomats and a handful of other people. Moreover, in U.S. v Wong Kim Ark and again in Plyer v. Doe, the Supreme Court firmly rejected the notion that persons born in the US are not citizens, regardless of the immigration status of their parents.

Paul’s utter disregard for the Constitution’s plain text is particularly damning because, Paul justifies his radical opposition to cherished laws such as the Civil Rights Act by his false belief that such laws are unconstitutional. Like many conservatives, Paul subscribes to the “tenther” belief that the federal government lacks meaningful authority to regulate the national economy, and thus Congress is powerless against local businesses that want to exclude African-Americans or other disfavored groups.

Paul told NPR that every piece of legislation that Congress passes “should point to where in the Constitution they get the authority for it.” As his opposition to birthright citizenship indicates, however, he seems quite comfortable contravening the express words of the Constitution.

The Source (http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/28/paul-citizenship/)

[Foggy]

Someone explain the 14th Amendment to Rand.

I'm otherwise occupied.

[Spang]

Rand Paul's ophthalmology certification not recognized by national clearinghouse

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul says he is a "board-certified" ophthalmologist -- even though the national clearinghouse for such certifications says he hasn't been for the past five years.

Rand Paul, who practices in Bowling Green, says he is certified by the National Board of Ophthalmology, a group that he incorporated in 1999 and that he heads.

But that entity is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties, which works with the American Medical Association to approve such specialty boards.

The Complete Article (http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100614/NEWS0106/6140307/Rand-Paul-s-ophthalmology-certification-not-recognized-by-national-clearinghouse)

[RichardMZhlubb]

Shouldn't it be illegal for a doctor to claim to be "Board-certified" when the board in question is one he created for himself? At a minimum it's highly unethical.

[Spang]

Rand Paul refuses to say how old the earth is

I attended a fancy Christian Homeschool Educators of Kentucky (CHEK) conference on Friday, where Liberty Christ himself showed up to give a sermon and answer (and dodge) a few questions.

Here is the question and answer session:

(No Sanity)

OK, before we go into Rand's answers, here's a bit of info about what CHEK is all about. Their objective (http://www.chek.org/Objectives_and_Service) is to:

"Protect children from mental physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by secular humanists in a socialist society or governmental system."

[...]

Well, part of this "abuse" that the socialist secular humanists try to impose on our children is telling them that the earth is more than 6,000 years old, and humans never rode saddled dinosaurs.

The Complete Article (http://barefootandprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/06/rand-paul-refuses-to-say-how-old-earth.html)

[Spang]

Rand Paul defends tea party as 'mainstream'

Speaking before a crowd of around 250 in Northern Kentucky Saturday, Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul defended "tea party" members against charges that they are outside the mainstream.

"We cannot let them characterize us," Paul said. "There has been a concerted effort since the tea party began to rise, since my victory, to paint us as something we are not."

"There is nothing about our movement that is really outside of any kind of mainstream...." he said. "You are part of the mainstream."

[...]

(No Sanity)

The Complete Article (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/07/rand-paul-defends-tea-party-as.html)

[Spang]

Rand Paul Wants Less Money For Kentucky

[...]

Perhaps by describing three "halves" of every tax dollar, Paul was being folksy. Perhaps the bad math is a reporter's invention. Regardless, this is a great opportunity to point out that Paul's philosophy of local control is based in part on misinformation.

When Kentucky sends a tax dollar to Washington, it does miraculously turn into three-halves of a dollar. Kentucky gets at least $1.51 back from the federal government for every $1.00 that it contributes to the nation, placing it near the top of state rankings.

Paul is in effect saying that if he is Kentucky's next Senator, he will work to reduce his state's share of federal spending, thus hurting his own constituents.

[...]

http://www.visualeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/tax.jpg

The Complete Article (http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201007120004)

[Spang]

Rand Paul Taunts Farmers, Is Barely Even Winning

Dr. Rand Paul has been somewhat quiet of late, after realizing that saying the things he actually thinks is not the world’s greatest idea. But, despite Sharron Angle’s revolutionary new political science theories, sometimes you have to appear before the voters and speak words, aloud. So Rand Paul did this, in a joint appearance with his opponent, before a demographic that’s always open to ideologies of total self-reliance and an absence of government subsidies: farmers!

Paul and boring-looking Democrat Jack Conway went to the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation and talked about agriculture. Did you know the federal government has a whole department dedicated to agriculture, which hands out lots of money to agriculturalists? Did you know that Rand Paul wants this department and those handouts eliminated?

[...]

Ha ha, Rand Paul has not learned that “pandering” and “giving people what they want” are the keys to being elected! Paul thinks that all of farmers’ problems can be solved with free trade everywhere, because people in Colombia and Panama and South Korea simply can’t wait to get their hands on Kentucky farmers’ … corn? Let’s say corn.

[...]

The Complete Article (http://wonkette.com/416889/rand-paul-taunts-farmers-is-barely-even-winning)

[Spang]

Rand on the Run

Mr. "Aqua Buddha" Paul won't talk to reporters. So I went to Kentucky to track him down.

On a crowded Saturday in August at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville, between vendors selling funnel cakes and Christian T-shirts, three volunteers manned a booth for Rand Paul's Senate campaign. They smiled, waved, and seemed to be having a good time—until I stopped by and announced that I planned to hang out. "We can't let you do that," said one, who declined to give her name. So I talked to the only person who would give me the time of day—a woman in a wheelchair who had stopped by to grab a Paul bumper sticker. I asked her if she agreed with Paul's stance that the Americans with Disabilities Act is an unfair burden to business owners. She looked to the volunteer for clarification, but now she, too, encountered the Paul campaign's code of silence. "I can't talk to you, ma'am," the volunteer apologized. "I don't want to mis-say something."

Stalking jittery campaign workers certainly wasn't how I'd hoped to cover Paul, who is seen as one of the tea-party-type Republicans most likely to capture a statewide seat this fall. But then, I didn't have much choice: Paul, the son of libertarian stalwart Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), has gone to near-comic lengths to avoid what Sarah Palin calls the "lamestream media." Everyone, from Paul and his top staffers to the lowliest door-knockers, has virtually stopped talking to reporters. The campaign did not return any of my phone calls requesting interviews over the course of three months. Even after I flew across the country and drove two hours to Paul's busy campaign HQ in Bowling Green, I was politely turned away. "I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful," said a volunteer who avoided eye contact, seemingly shaken by the appearance of a live journalist. After myriad phone calls, I finally got one of Paul's county-level campaign coordinators on the line, but he demurred: "It's nothing to do with you; I just don't do interviews, period."

[...]

Paul's not alone in his media-free campaign strategy. After getting zinged for statements she'd made when she was a long-shot primary candidate, Nevada senatorial contender Sharron Angle stopped granting interviews to most local and national outlets. Joe Miller, the tea party senatorial candidate in Alaska, recently said he would not answer any media questions about his background; soon afterwards, his private security guards handcuffed and detained a journalist who tried to interview him. California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, is the first statewide candidate to refuse to meet with the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board in more than a decade. And Palin has barely spoken with any media besides Fox since her infamous interview with Katie Couric—without sacrificing her visibility or popularity. Similarly, Paul has called on the tea party to bypass the fourth estate by creating "another estate," its own network of trusted blogs and websites. "We cannot let them"—the media—"characterize us," he told a crowd at the Kentucky Freedom Festival in July.

[...]

The Complete Article (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/rand-paul-kentucky-media)

[foxyladi]

toast:rotfl:

[Suzan]

The Complete Article (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/rand-paul-kentucky-media)
He doesn't deserve to be elected for this alone.

I heard a Republican pundit say that campaigns are the way candidates are tested. I agree. If they cut themselves off from the voting public in this way, they do it at their own peril. They're being elected to represent us, the people. They should have enough respect for us and themselves to tell us who they are, what they stand for and how they're going to represent us. They need to do that through the press to reach the great majority of Americans, and they need to make sure their voice is heard.

JMO, but I do feel strongly about it.

[NativeSun]

Rand Paul will do just fine. People in KY are seeing this attack by Conway for what it is. A desparate attempt to turn around a losing campaign. It didn't work for Elizabeth Dole when she did it to her opponent in 2008. And it won't work for Conway. And if you look at the most recent polling, this "scandal" only brought down Rand Paul's lead (which he still maintains). It did not move up Conways numbers. What happened was a shift towards undecideds, albeit a small one. I doubt that Conway will pick any of those up.