More Rand Paul

Based on a perusal of the Issues page at Rand Paul’s campaign website, he seems like a good conservative with reasoned positions and not a libertarian anti-American like his father. Also, in the campaign TV ads and interviews that are posted there, he is personable and intelligent, and I can see why he won such a big victory over his opponent. I’ll have more to say on this as I learn more.

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Richard W. writes:

The reason that I was encouraged by Rand’s victory is that it shows that machine politics are a losing proposition.

Rand didn’t run in a vacuum, he ran against Trey, a very conventional Republican, who, moreover, was supported by Mitch McConnell, the very epitome of wishy-washy, try to have it both ways conservatism.

Here is what Rand said in his victory speech:

“When [Republicans] were in charge, we doubled the deficit, and now with Democrats in charge, they’re tripling the deficit,” Paul said. “What the Tea Party says is there’s bipartisan blame to go around for the deficit and we have to do a better job.”

I realize that your blog doesn’t spend a lot of time on budget and fiscal issues, but for a lot of voters what is going on with the deficit is really scary. We look at Greece and think: we could be next.

Ron Paul’s great appeal was his steadfast and honest appraisal of the broken federal budget. He also focused on the role of the Federal Reserve bank. In the wake of the bank failures and bailouts anyone who watched the debates had to have a moment where they said “Ron Paul was right, it really is a house of cards.”

I take as axiomatic many of the criticisms of Ron Paul are true: he is a weirdo conspiracy theorist, with some very unsavory friends.

He looked way too risky to trust with running the country, but as a protest candidate he was certainly a good choice. Which is about where he finished, with 5-10 percent of the total GOP primary votes. 4th place behind McCain, Huck, and Romney.

Still none of his weirdness takes away from the fact that he was the only candidate in 2008 who seemed to have any fire in his guts for talking about the tough issues of Federal spending, inflation, the power of bankers, and entitlements.

All three of those who finished above him ran vacuous campaigns largely devoid of plans for addressing the issues, other than “I believe in a strong America.”

Rand seems to have jettisoned much of his father’s historical conspiracy theory stuff and focused down on the core issues of the unsustainable budget mess. In doing so he’s gone against the Mitch McConnell wing of the GOP which seems more concerned about maintaining power than fixing things.

For the USA to avoid total collapse the right must find tougher men to take hard stands against the proven failures we are burdened with: welfare statism, Medicare, crony-bailouts like both Bush and Obama have been involved in, and many other policies that McConnell and company have tacitly approved.

Rand Paul is someone who appears willing and able to take some of that mission on.

Leonard D., who objected to my earlier, critical post on Rand Paul, writes:

Fair enough! Although I do disagree with you that Ron Paul is anti-American. What he is, is a Constitutionalist, and therefore necessarily anti big government. Small government, Constitutional America may no longer be possible, but you can hardly call it anti American, nor for that matter untraditional. Big government is the modern innovation, not small. And this applies as much to Big Military as it does to Big Welfare. [LA replies: I fundamentally disagree with you about Ron Paul. People who describe him as merely a Constitutionalist are not seeing him as he is. His anti-Americanism is manifest not only in what he says, but in the emotional attitude he conveys when he’s saying it.]

As for the logical inference you made, that since the father is a truther, so is the son, I believe I made the case why I believe it was an unsound inference. Namely: (1) that the evidence presented does not convince me that Ron Paul himself is a truther, just a trimmer (2) that even assuming for the sake of argument that Ron Paul is a truther, it is unsound to attempt to infer the specific views of a man from a general knowledge that his policies are similar to those of another man, even another man whose specific views you do know

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2010 11:40 AM | Send