Friday, June 15, 2012

Larison: Content of Rand's Endorsement Ought to be Alarming

Daniel Larison, at The Week, with a deep consideration of Rand Paul's foreign policy comments and the views of Mitt Romney:
Did Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) betray his father's political movement by endorsing Mitt Romney last week? No... but the content of Rand's endorsement ought to be alarming for the supporters of Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) presidential campaigns, and for anyone interested in a more restrained and prudent foreign policy. While Rand is not as strictly non-interventionist as his father, no one could confuse him for a hawk in the mold of Florida's Marco Rubio. When the Kentucky senator praised Romney for his "mature" foreign policy and asserted that the Republican nominee believed war should be a last resort, he hurt his reputation with his strongest supporters and undermined the critique of Republican foreign policy that has been central to his father's message. No less important, Rand provided Romney with valuable political cover for a foreign policy that appears to be every bit as reckless as that of George W. Bush...

The problem is not just that Paul gave Romney a free pass on foreign policy. He lent credibility to the idea that Romney's aggressive rhetoric on the subject doesn't mean anything, and can therefore be safely dismissed by voters worried about a return to the Bush era. Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that Romney is channeling the views of his most hawkish advisers and promoting the foreign policy favored by veterans of the Bush administration. There is nothing in the public record to suggest that Romney's foreign policy would be one that Rand Paul could support.
Note: Rand did the same thing on the domestic front when he gave the absurd impression that the views on the Fed held by Romney and that of his father were similar.

This is the problem with Rand's endorsement of Romney. It is not a lesser of two evils endorsement. It is an attempt to distort Ron Paul's message and give the impression that Romney has the same view, when Romney is a warmongering (He even thinks Russia remains a threat)tool of the banksters that has no intention of as much as cutting the Fed's budget for staples.

24 comments:

  1. another possibility:

    Romney is a faux-hawk and is really a George HW Bush/Brent Scowcroft type...like everybody assumed all along

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  2. Why don't you interview Rand on just this topic building on his statement on similarity between Ron Paul and Romney?

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    1. Probably because, like in a video Bob posted elsewhere, Rand would say, "Why don't you make an appointment?" Sounds just like all the other creeps in the Imperial City.

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  3. Gross.

    I'll just say this, the Remnant is pissed.

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  4. Uhhm, well he did have to attach some (b/s) substance to his endorsement, he can't just say "I'm endorsing Romney because I don't want to be accused of not being a team player in four years." That would have been the same as not endorsing at all.

    Also, why discount the possibility that Romney is just humoring the neocons?

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    1. "Also, why discount the possibility that Romney is just humoring the neocons?"

      This is just silly.

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  5. Benedict Arnold has absolutely nothing on this guy. What a complete traitor to the ideology of his father. I hope being a servant to the powerful is worth it to him, he sold his legacy for it.

    http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/06/15/2118257/sen-rand-paul-introduces-tsa-reform-legislation

    "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."

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  6. Off topic, but Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini, is making sense:

    http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-global-perfect-storm

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  7. You guys are acting like a bunch of trekkie fanboys who just found out that your sister's boyfreind like Star Wars. Just what do you expect him to do? He has no political leverage or big finacial backing. The neocons have spend decades to get were they are at. Their gatekeepers are everywhere. He is one man, and they are many. Really, you guys are armchair quarterbacks.

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    1. No, it's more like we found out our sister's boyfriend is campaigning for a guy who will kill innocent men, women and children, who will lie, cheat, and steal, and who is our enemy in everything that we stand for. But we also know that he is not been brainwashed to actually believe that the man he is endorsing is actually a good guy. Then we find out he is not only endorsing this monster but trying to make him sound better than he is and associating things we believe in with this guy.

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    2. "Just what do you expect him to do?"

      I dunno...
      Be a man of principle?

      I know, i know. I'm just being silly.
      How dare we expect such trivial things from people who want power over all of us.

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  8. Does Larison know what Rand and Mitt said to each other?? Romney will turn out to be much more of a realist than a NeoCon.

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    1. Yeah, your're probably right. Wait a minute, does realist mean blood thirsty warmonger? If not, then I don't think you're right.

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  9. It hardly matters since we've passed the inflection point of the debt curve. As for me, I'll continue my extended celebration of National Bourbon Day.

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  10. "Does Larison know what Rand and Mitt said to each other?? Romney will turn out to be much more of a realist than a NeoCon."

    That's certainly possible. But the whole point is that you have no idea what Romney is actually in favor of (other than himself)

    It could very well be that Romney, in private, told Ron and Rand he has no intention of attacking Iran. Meanwhile, what is he telling Sheldon Adleson? Certainly he is lying to one or both, but he can't be telling the truth to both.

    Now I will not make any attacks against Rand because I adore his dad. And a Romney endorsement would not bother me if it were along the lines of "I have a lot of disagreements with Mitt, but he is still much better than Obama and I support him for that reason." He can even talk about what a nice Mitt he is personally. But Rand took it too far.

    That said, there is nothing to be gained by attacking him. The last thing we want is to force Ron to choose between his son and us, because we are sure to loose that one.

    Best is to say "we regret Rand is taking a different path. We wish him all the best but we will press on without him."

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  11. My gosh has this been blown way out of proportion. We would be so lucky to have a congress full of Rand Pauls. Yet you guys treat him as though he was Dick Morris.

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    1. No, it hasn't. And who knows now just how much Rand is willing to compromise? It's a slippery slope. Either someone has integrity or he doesn't and we can no longer afford to play that f***ing game called "compromise." If I have to be inflicted with a Congress, it needs to be full of *Ron* Pauls...

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    2. If you can no longer afford to "compromise" you will be stuck as irrelevant in the Libertarian party. Let Rand's voting do the talking. No one is dying because of this 2 minute clip. He is one of the best liberty congressmen we have and just because you don't think he should "play the game" you turned on him. It's people like you who make Amash consider giving it up. You guys think we were THIS close to taking over Washington, but then Rand screwed it up. Come back to reality, we are not one step away from having a limited, liberty minded government. This is a process and moving the establishment has to be done in many ways.

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    3. "If you can no longer afford to "compromise" you will be stuck as irrelevant in the Libertarian party. Let Rand's voting do the talking. No one is dying because of this 2 minute clip. He is one of the best liberty congressmen we have and just because you don't think he should "play the game" you turned on him. It's people like you who make Amash consider giving it up."

      If you, Rand, or anyone else thinks you need to compromise your principles to get somewhere then go ahead and do it. Nobody is stopping you. Just don't expect people who disagree with you to sit silent while you do it. If Amash or Rand want to give up because we don't like some of the things they do then they need to get a friggin back bone.

      Robert Murphy and Wenzel disagree with each other from time to time and yet you don't hear them crying about it. Hell, there is so much debate between libertarians on so many issues that it makes me question whether you know anything about our movement if you think this is harsh treatment of Rand. I think Wenzel is way off on IP but I don't think Wenzel is going to consider giving up to know that.

      If you want to keep supporting Rand's political career then go ahead and do it. But some of us have different ideas for what is best. Deal with it.

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  12. That long-term outlook is why Paul’s campaign manager took the unusual step last week of condemning “isolated instances of grassroots activists working toward an ostensible ‘hostile takeover’ of the GOP” in Idaho.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76297.html#ixzz1xv8uBRP7

    So, Ron Paul's campaign manager condemned an attempt at takeover of the Idaho GOP by the Ron Paul people! Surreal.

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  13. The Liberty Movement runs on principle. Ron Paul is *not* the leader of the Movement, he is accepted by us only *because* of his proven integrity. Rand however has now revealed to the Movement that his integrity is suspect.

    It doesn't matter if there are no Movement people in the District of Criminals. The Movement is going to DC one way or another, with or without Rand or even Ron.

    My advise to Rand, "It's the integrity, stupid."

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  14. I think the real problem with Rand Paul's endorsement is embodied in his criticisms of Santorum in this interview of Rand by Ben Swann.

    Rand correctly criticizes and mocks Santorum for Santorum's past positions and his resistance to the Ron Paul delegation. However, had Santorum won, Rand Paul would have been endorsing him.

    This is where blind endorsements create inconsistencies that undermine Rand's credibility. If Coke suddenly endorsed Pepsi, you'd have to question whether Coke was a good product. Rand tries to pretend his endorsement doesn't really mean anything, but if it doesn't mean anything, then why do it to begin with? Rand just wants to be a "team player," but it is politics as a team sport that has the country in such trouble. Just because a guy is on "your team" doesn't make him a good guy.

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  15. I don't pretend to be the great scholar or pure adherent of any capital-letter named movement. The frustrations of a lifetime, considered within the repose of advancing age, almost accidentally funneled my attention down to the recorded thoughts of those few great minds whose circumstances provided greater opportunities to closely reason what were to me vague impressions of potential.

    In this case of Rand Paul, such a mind has offered a rubric:

    "Sometimes, curiously enough, the same individual will undergo alterations from one of these opposing errors to the other, in each case scorning the proper strategic path. Thus, despairing after years of futile reiteration of his purity while making no advances in the real world, the left sectarian may leap into the heady thickets of right opportunism, in the quest for some short-run advance, even at the cost of his ultimate goal. Or the right opportunist, growing disgusted at his own or his colleagues' compromise of their intellectual integrity and their ultimate goals, may leap into left sectarianism and decry any setting of strategic priorities toward those goals. In this way, the two opposing deviations feed on and reinforce each other, and are both destructive of the major task of effectively reaching the libertarian goal.

    How, then, can we know whether any halfway measure or transitional demand should be hailed as a step forward or condemned as an opportunistic betrayal? There are two vitally important criteria for answering this crucial question: (1) that, whatever the transitional demands, the ultimate end of liberty be always held aloft as the desired goal; and (2) that no steps or means ever explicitly or implicitly contradict the ultimate goal. A short-run demand may not go as far as we would like, but it should always be consistent with the final end; if not, the short-run goal will work against the long-run purpose, and opportunistic liquidation of libertarian principle will have arrived."

    http://mises.org/daily/1709

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