The Difference Between Rand and Wrong

Bowling Green, Kentucky

First, immigration, and now, he’s done a one-eighty on drones.

What’s wrong with him?

I think I have the answer.  For those of you who have read this space regularly over the past several months, you already know what my theory is.

When Rand Paul first announced that he was running for Senate from Kentucky in 2009, only after Jim Bunning announced his own retirement, (and RP made it clear all along that he was only going to run if Bunning was retiring), one of the things he communicated to tuned in people like your blogmeister is that he wasn’t entering the race and going into electoral politics merely to be his father’s son and clone.  His goal all along was to try to be a bridge between his father’s worldview and the worldview of lamestream conservatives like Rush Limbaugh.  Or, to put it more accurately, he wanted to triangulate between the two in order to form a new paradigm.

The problem with that goal is that there is no natural constituency for a halfway between Ron and Rush ideology, either for the purposes of motivating boots on the ground or raising money.  That became clear in RP’s primary campaign versus the man who was considered a shoo-in for the Kentucky Senate race, both primary and general, until RP got in himself, that being Kentucky AG Trey Grayson.  Rand might have wanted to triangulate, but he had to rely on his father’s name and fundraising machine to get money.  At the same time, while his father’s people were good at getting and giving money, they weren’t good at actually getting boots on the ground to win elections, as even to this day, Ron Paul has never won a statewide election of any sort.  So for energy, Rand had to rely on the Tea Party Movement, which is basically warmed over Reagan conservatism with something of a hard baked right-libertarian edge.  So while he wanted to triangulate, he needed money and boots from either end against which he was trying to split the middle.

The flawed game wasn’t flawed enough to preclude him from going to the Senate.  But now that he wants to become President, those flaws are far magnified.  It takes a lot more money and a lot more boots to win the Republican nomination for President than it does to win a Senate seat, then many more to carry you across the finish line in the general election.

Netting it out:  Why is Rand Paul so politically schizophrenic these days?  The answer is that he has probably suddenly discovered that he can’t triangulate new political ground, so he’s frantically going back and forth trying to be the servant of two masters that really don’t like each other, those being the lamestream conservative establishment (which is more and more being brought into the fold of the RINO establishment) and his father’s loyalists.  And both sides know it, and neither side really trusts him for trying to serve both sides.

 

Slow Down But Don’t Stop

U.S. Senate

Guess who wants to slow down the amnesty train.

But…before you think he’s changed his mind, read carefully:

I believe that any real comprehensive immigration reform must implement strong national security protections. The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system. If we don’t use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.

IOW, RP is greasing the skids for what I predicted earlier today. In reality, we all know that “comprehensive immigration reform” and “strong national security protections” are diametrically opposing concepts.

How It’s Done

Washington, D.C.

Slate:

A 50-Point Swing Against Targeted Drone Killings of U.S. Citizens

A year ago, as the presidential race was taking shape, The Washington Post’s pollster asked voters whether they favored the use of drones to kill terrorists or terror suspects if they were “American citizens living in other countries.” The net rating at the time was positive: 65 percent for, 26 percent against.

Today, after a month of Rand Paul-driven discussion of drone warfare, Gallup asks basically the same question: Should the U.S. “use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against U.S. citizens living abroad who are suspected terrorists?” The new numbers: 41 percent for, 52 percent against.

The lede of the poll is even kinder to Paul, finding as high as 79 percent opposition to targeted killing in the United States. But that’s a new question. On the old question, we’ve seen a real queasy swing of public opinion.

Now, I would not have swung on the question of the use of drones to target “U.S. citizens” over in Whackistan (really, nasty Muslim terrorists or terrorist wannabes who only got American citizenship based on this “birthright” bullshit or the fact that we give out citizenship to any non-white with a pulse), but their use on American soil is a far different question.

My point in bringing this up is this:  When you display a little bit of leadership, and take the time and effort to explain things to people, people will get it.

So who will be the Rand Paul filibustering for 13 hours on immigration?  Because it certainly won’t be Rand Paul.

As a Matter of De Facto

Kentucky

CNS:

Paul: We Already Have ‘De Facto’ Amnesty for Immigrants

Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday that current U.S. immigration policy amounts to “de facto amnesty,” as he responded to conservative criticism against amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“I’ve got a news flash for those who want to call people names on amnesty. What we have now is de facto amnesty,” Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, told Fox News Thursday.

And that’s literally correct. We’ve had de facto amnesty by means of non-enforcement of immigration law almost continuously since 1965. But your solution is to turn the de facto amnesty into de jure amnesty.

“We have 11 million people here that have been here, some of them for a decade or more. No one is telling them to go home. No one is sending them home.”

And that’s why they’re coming and not going home, because of the de facto amnesty that you want to become de jure amnesty means that nobody is preventing them from coming and nobody is making them go home.

So what would Paul tell illegal immigrants?

“I would say if you want to work, we’ll find a place for you, but that doesn’t mean that you get special privileges,” the potential presidential candidate said.

“It just means we’ll get you a work visa. Work visas, really, we have plenty of work visas to give every year. We’re not giving them out because the process is too onerous. So we need to make the facility of getting a work visa much easier.”

Paul said Wednesday that his immigration plan consists of conferring work visas on illegal immigrants and that he is “open to debate” about what comes next, Politico reports.

Bingo. He wants work permits granted immediately. “What comes next” if anything won’t matter, because, once again, repeating V-Dare’s excellent mantra, the work permit is the amnesty.

And what’s with this business about “we have plenty of work visas to give every year?”  As if wages and salaries aren’t low enough already?

Eternal Proof

EIB Network

I’m going to blockquote it here.  Yes, I know, it seems so incredulous that Rush Limbaugh actually denounced neo-cons today.  That’s why I want to save it here for eternity.

But here’s the substance of this.  There is a fear among McCain, Lindsey Graham, and others who favor an interventionist foreign policy.  Think of the neocons. Think of going into Iraq and not just securing Iraq, but building a democracy. Nation building, if you will.  Think of the outbreak of the Arab Spring and the people on our side who thought, “Wow, this is wonderful. This is the outbreak of American democracy,” when it wasn’t.  It was the exact opposite.  Rand Paul, they’re asking themselves, is he his father’s son or is he on his own here?  They’re worried that he’s his father’s son.  They’re worried that Rand Paul is an isolationist.  They’re worried that Rand Paul’s diatribe on drones really means that Rand Paul wants to bring the military home and not use it unless we’re attacked.  He doesn’t like it being used in an intervention.  This is what they fear.  And as he succeeds in making a connection with the American people, they are worried, the neocons are worried that they are being undermined by this.

I’ll tell you why.  Rand Paul made a connection with the American people.  These other people do not.  He made a connection.  Therefore, he has the ability to influence and motivate people.  I’m telling you what their fears are.  They thought that Ron Paul was absolute nutcase, wacko. That’s why they’re calling Rand Paul a wacko, ’cause that’s what they thought of Ron Paul.  Libertarian, fruitcake, nutcase, isolationist, shut down the US military, speak positively about Islamists, all this kind of stuff.  They are afraid that’s who Rand Paul is, and they’re afraid that what Rand Paul was doing with this filibuster was not just speaking out against the use of drones on American citizens on American soil.  They’re afraid that Rand Paul is actually setting the stage for building up public support to stop the interventionist usage of American military might and foreign policy all over the world.  It’s a fear that they’ve got.

And there’s more to it than that, too.  It’s also the whole notion of jealousy in power politics.  Let me put it this way.  They, I think, are worried that Rand Paul might be skillful enough to move the Republican mainstream away from the McCain, Kristol, neoconservatism view of the world and toward a position that is not as extreme as his father’s, but is suspicious of interventionism, suspicious of Islamic democracy building, suspicious of financial and military support for dubious regimes.

Implicitly and in his own way, Rush has also noticed what I have noticed ever since Rand first started running for Senate in 2010, that he’s never been purely about being just his father’s son, that his goal all along was to triangulate halfway between his father and this very same Rush Limbaugh.  Like I said a few days ago, Rand’s filibuster just might have had the effect of creating what I think was missing until now, a natural constituency for this “halfway house” ideology that can be an independent fundraising source that can at least keep Rand in the Senate — Whether it’s enough to raise the kind of coin he would need to win the Presidency, that still remains to be seen.

Sequester

Kentucky

He’s not quite my favorite person in the world these days, but Rand Paul just returned $600,000 of the money allocated for running his Senate office back to the Treasury.  Not only is that more than he returned last year ($500k), but is also reflective of 20% of the amount allocated/budgeted for this purpose.

Yet, sequestering 2.5% of the total current Federal budget is going to kill us all and lead to disaster and Armageddon, according to Obama.

I Know Something You Don’t Know

Kentucky

I’d like to think Rand Paul’s quasi-amnesty proposal is some sort of acute positional bargaining to head off any amnesty bill.  Maybe his inclusion of an absolute moratorium plus the fact that he doesn’t amnesty enough illegal aliens quickly enough is specifically designed to have it rejected, to make the pro-amnesty side look like the fanatics that they are.

I fear it’s some sort of attempt to split the middle between an Obama style bill and my position.

Either way, I oppose it.  Any legalization of non-white illegal aliens, quasi or otherwise, only hastens the day when we become a minority in our own country.

However, as Peter Brimelow just noted on V-Dare, this makes Rand Paul the most prominent elected politician openly to call for an immigration moratorium, even if it might be a political trick.

Anyway, I’m going to let all of you in on a secret, something I heard through a very plugged in grapevine in the last few months.

Not only is Rand not running for President in 2016, he won’t even run for re-election to the Senate.  He misses his eye surgery practice dearly.  He’s grooming just-elected Congressman Thomas Massie from KY-4 to replace him in the Senate in 2016.  As an aside, unlike all the other newly elected members of Congress who will be sworn in in early January, Massie goes to Congress right away, because KY-4 had two ballots featuring the same candidates, a special election to replace the vacant seat and a regular ballot to determine the occupant for two years per usual, Massie won both.  It’s not too dissimilar from the double ballot Illinois had with Mark Kirk vs Alexi What’s-His-Face two years ago, the first to finish the existing term and the second for the six-year seat.

How I Regard Rand Paul

Libertarianville

Writer for Lew Rockwell’s Blog tries to talk Ronheads who hate Rand’s “treachery” off the ledge.

I’m here to make it even more simple than this.

Ron Paul was perfectly happy being the “1″ in a 415-1 vote, out of pure principle.  Rand Paul would rather be one of 51 in a 51-49 vote for a piece of legislation that gives him, his father, and his father’s loyalists 80% of what they want.

Anything But Lazy

U.S. Senate

Is it me, or is Rand Paul all over the the place and has his hands in all sorts of Senate business?

As much as many of us liked Ron Paul to one degree or another, he had a reputation for Congressional laziness.  Yes, I know, I’m using the past tense prematurely, even though he still has one big battle left.  It’s as if this isn’t lost on Rand, and he’s making up for lost time.

A Few Paul Items

Yep, that’s him.

Among likely Republican Primary voters, Ron Paul is the most trustworthy candidate, with Romney in close second and Newt Gingrich well back in third.  This is why I still think Romney will win, and that Ron Paul will finish second in a lot of states, and might well pull off a few wins.  People can say one thing in opinion polls months before any actual vote, but when they go to the voting booth, then the rubber hits the road and the shit gets serious.

Ron Paul will do far better in 2012 compared to 2008 simply because the financial crisis happened between the two.  Remember, McCain wrapped up the nomination just a few weeks after Super Tuesday in March, and the fall of Bear Stearns happened just days later.  It wasn’t until mid-September that the bottom really collapsed.  If the whole set of events in the financial crisis would have happened nine months sooner, Ron Paul would have done a lot better in 2008.

National Review gives Rand Paul space to respond to criticism of him from their regular writers.  Like I have said in this medium recently, I’m mostly on Paul’s side, but I wish someone would call out the white elephant in the room.  The reason some think we have to give the Federal government the power to detain “citizens” in seemingly unconstitutional ways for “terrorism” is because we give citizenship to anything two legs, as long as it’s non-white and hates America.  The better, cleaner and simpler idea would be not to give citizenship or legal immigration status to the kind of people that hate us.

Stuff White People Don’t Give a Shit About

Honest question for the media/left that’s shitting a brick over Rand Paul’s slight dissent from CRA ’64:

Do you honestly think the average white voter in Kentucky, or even most states, has as their chief concern when choosing whom to vote for in a given election, the Civil Rights Act of 1964?  Then again, <sarcasm>you just might be right:  I saw it all the time on Dukes of Hazzard, that ole Bo, Cletus and Boss Hogg sat around their table — They agreed that when they drove General Lee to the polling place, that they weren’t going to vote for Sheriff Roscoe, because he didn’t have the best attitude toward the Civil Rights Act of 1964.</sarcasm>

It’s the same deal from George Allen’s Macacagate in 2006:  I’ve proven it in this medium that Macaca didn’t defeat Allen.  However, to take the kook left at face value, one would have to think that the average white Virginian makes up his or her mind on whom to vote for in an election based on the words they used which may or may not be an ethnic slur for Indians from India.

My only criticism of Rand Paul in his reaction to this non-issue is that he’s backpedaling a little too far, even in spite of himself.  Granted, it’s not enough to make me not vote for him if I lived in KY, but it’s worthy for a rebuttal.  Consider this:

“This much is clear: The federal government has far overreached in its power grabs. Just look at the recent national healthcare schemes, which my opponent supports. The federal government, for the first time ever, is mandating that individuals purchase a product. The federal government is out of control, and those who love liberty and value individual and state’s rights must stand up to it.

Well duh, a Yankee government powerful enough to integrate forcefully a choke-and-puke in Alabama is one powerful enough to make you buy health insurance you may not want.  Interstate commerce is the justification used in both instances, though it’s all bullshit — It’s simply a matter of we’re the Yankee government, we’ve got all guns, so you’re gonna do what we tell you to do.  In other words, the Lincoln/Mao Rule of Government:  All power through the barrel of a gun.  In the case of HCR’s individual mandate, it was all done at the insistence of Miss Almost-a-Palindrome, the HC industry lobbyist who has a lot of influence in this Presidential administration that eschews the corruption of lobbyists.  In the case of the 1960s, lib kook law professors actually said that if a bird takes off from Georgia, crosses the state line into Alabama while flying and plonks a shit on the roof of a ma-and-pa eatery in Alabama, that this means the eatery was engaged in “interstate commerce,” and that was the Yankee government’s “in” to shove integration down its throat.

UPDATE 5/22: I figured out this morning what all the media fuss is about.  I think they know they can’t sink Rand Paul, and now I don’t think this is ultimately about him.  I think what the media/left are trying to do is to stir up shit, trying to get the liberal Repugnican establishment and the check-pants crowd to denounce the Tea Parties, hoping that it all erupts into an imbroglio that ends up with the TPs starting a third party.  All that would help Democrats in the short term, (which is all this media care about), but, depending on what happens to the TPM, it might accrue to the benefit of the political right in the long term.

Rand and Ann

A few post-postmortems from Tuesday:

(1)  Before Tuesday, the media hearted Rand Paul because he was sticking it to the DC/Lexington/Louisville blue blooded GOP establishment of a Mitch McConnell/Kentucky Leadership Academy (aka the University of Kentucky Law School).  Now that Rand Paul has won, the media love has turned into media knives.  Something which any dummy could have predicted.

I thought all along that the first knife to come out would have been Medicare.  However, since Rand Paul is an eye surgeon, and supports the Doc Fix for Medicare (i.e. don’t reduce Medicare reimbursements to physicians), it would be hard to say that he wants to get rid of Medicare.

Guess what the stupid media are using as their first knives?  Rand Paul’s libertarian-based opposition to parts of CRA ’64.  As a historical aside, the two main pillars of opposition to CRA ’64 in 1964 came from southern seg racialists (hint:  Richard Russell, Theodore Bilbo) and doctrinaire right-libertarians/states righters (Hint:  Barry Goldwater).  Some, like Wallace and Maddox, tried to fuse the two pillars together in their own opposition.  Paul is clearly (but only partially) in the latter camp.  However, the more the media portray his opposition as being motivated by the former, the more likely it is that poorer whites in mountainous parts of KY, the ones who might have been turned off by Rand Paul’s apparent libertarianism and its ramifications on welfare and transfer payments, will vote for him.

As if it matters anyway — Paul has a 25-point lead over his Democrat opponent in the polls, according to Rasmussen’s first polls after Tuesday’s primary.

Ironically, I’m linking to Assrick Assholrickson’s CrudState telling of this “controversy.”  I don’t know what gives with him and a lot of other neo/lamer types like Mark Levin — as much as they love Rand, they hate Ron.  While father and son are not carbon copies, they’re close enough, especially on issues important to neo chickenhawks, like Iraq.

In more Rand Paul news, whatever ill will there was among the Greyson constituency is now gone, such that 82% of KY GOPers will vote Paul.  On the other hand, the Democrat that lost, Lt. Gov. Mongiardo, to AG Conway — Mongiardo’s people are the ones eating sour grapes — Conway only has 59% of KY Ds.  AFAIK, Conway and Mongiardo were almost totally alike in ideology, substance and style, so, unlike some of Greyson’s people, whose sour grapes can be rationalized, Mongiardo’s people must be real tools.

The CW for the rest of the campaign is that Paul’s big lead won’t hold because he’ll make rookie mistakes, while Conway is a supposedly polished pro.  First off, Paul is 47 years old, not 21.  When Rand Paul was 21, back in 1984, he was more or less the proxy for his father’s Senate candidacy in Texas, when he lost to Phil Gramm in the primary, so Rand isn’t some wet-behind-the-ears noob.  And even if Rand does make rookie mistakes, he’s got a 25-point pad — He can afford to make a lot of rookie mistakes.

(2)  Ann Coulter pours cold water all over GOP hubris.  She must be reading my mind.

(3)  President Obama is trying to say that an election held in all of Pennsylvania should not be interpreted as a referendum on him, but an election held in one Pennsylvania Congressional District should.