Every time Rand Paul opens his mouth, he seems to put both feet and a couple of other appendages in it. There was that unfortunate interview with Rachel Maddow, there was the “couldn’t get any gayer” quip – and now this.In an alternately opaque and all-too-revealing interview with the Daily Paul web site, in which he tried to explain why he endorsed Mitt Romney, Sen. Paul actually said “It doesn’t mean anything.” I’m sure the Romney campaign will be quite glad to hear that.However, a few minutes later he was infusing the endorsement with historic significance, telling his no doubt baffled and increasingly skeptical listeners it would open all kinds of doors for the “liberty movement,” among them the promise that “we are going to have a big influence over what happens with the platform.” Citing a laundry list of his own personal legislative goals – legalizing hemp, ending mandatory minimums for nonviolent crimes, auditing the Fed – he declared “we need to look beyond politics.”To those Ron Paulians still fighting in the trenches – in Iowa, for example, where they won a hard-fought victory, or in Louisiana, where the Romneyites called the cops and shut down the delegate-selection process – hearing this must be absolutely infuriating. While the establishment Republican leadership is using every dirty trick in the book – and a few new ones – to stop Ron Paul’s duly-elected delegates from being seated, their candidate’s son is going over to the enemy!Read the rest here.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Justin Raimondo on Ron vs. Rand: A Study in Betrayal
Justin Raimondo is, finally, out with his take on the Rand Paul endorsement of Mitt Romney:
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The son is NOT the father, Beware of crusaders spouting rhetoric. Rand Paul is by no stretch a limited government conservative.
ReplyDeleteNot much gets past Justin Raimundo on foreign policy, but he is often over the top on domestic politics as when he denounced Ron Paul for not making a totally useless third party run in 2008 or when he similarly denounced Chuck Hagel for deciding to make the entirely personal decision to retire instead of running for president and splitting the already small anti-war vote that Ron Paul needed to unite behind him.
ReplyDeleteLike most Paulian die-hards, Raimundo is going bonkers over utterly routine politics. Rand is right to claim that his endorement doesn't mean much. As I've said before, it is more valuable to Rand than to Romney.
Fast forward in your imagination to 2016. Suppose Romney loses 2012 and Rand Paul and Santorum are engaged in a tight battle in Iowa. with a week to go, Romney comes out and endorses Rand. This is not out of the question. I have a sneaking suspicion that Romney's political decisions are not based on strongly-held principles and reports are that Romney and Santorum don't like each other all that much. Meanwhile, the Pauls and the Romneys are on very friendly terms.
Rand is paying a price among the most rabid Paulians for this endorsement but they have no place to go. Meanwhile, he is earning benefits for the future. It is well worth the cost.
If, like Ron Paul, you refuse utterly to play the political game, you simply don't win. You will wait until doomsday to convert 51% of the public to libertarianism. You have to strike a balance. So far this campaign, it has been the biggest criticism of Ron Paul that he has never attempted to do that. Now that Rand is doing it, he is encountering similar criticism.
There's a reason polticians talk the way they do, and it irritates me when I hear Rand mimicking that rhetoric. But there were also times when I cringed at Ron Paul for phrasing his statements in ways that were certain to alienate otherwise friendly voters.
Meanwhile,let me point out again, that Ron Paul endorsed Michelle Bachmann, and it was no "lesser of two bozos" endorsement. He sent out fund-raising e-mails on her behalf. It's routine politics not "betrayal."
Very well said. I couldn't agree more.
DeleteWe already know how well retaining your ideological purity works in American politics as Ron Paul is the epitome of that standard.
It remains to be seen if Rand's chosen path of playing the political party games will yield greater returns for liberty or if, in the final analysis, he simply becomes another useless political hack.
Only time will tell. A rush to judgement at this point seems a potentially fatal mistake for the liberty movement.
'routine politics' is corrupt and dishonest. what sets ron paul apart from literally every other politician is that he doesn't engage in 'routine politics.'
DeleteI love Justin, he is really smart and insightful. I donate to Antiwar.com because of him. (It's tax deductible!)
ReplyDeleteHis analysis of Rand Paul's Romney endorsement reminds me of another time when politics trumped the feelings of Ron Paul's followers. In 2008, just before the election, Justin himself abandoned Ron Paul, and endorsed Obama. I hope he learned something from that experience.
Wait, so this guy endorsed Obama and he's moralizing Rand for endorsing Romney? He's a clown.
DeleteJustin was writing tongue-in-cheek. The article is mocking in its tone and even references his substantial criticisms of Obama.
ReplyDeleteThere was nothing wrong with the "couldn’t get any gayer” quip, other than Raimondo couldn't handle it.
ReplyDeleteHomosexuals still have the same rights as heterosexuals when it comes to marriage. They just can't marry their father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son, more than one spouse at a time or one under the age of what? 12 or an unrelated spouse of the same sex. IOW the whole "poor little old victim of discrimination against homosexuals because we can't marry anybody we want just like heterosexuals" is bogus. They need to stop trying to take cuts and go to the back of the line.
And stop whining.