The thing about doing interviews exclusively with right-wing outlets is that we can still read what you have to say. For example, here’s Rand Paul talking to the National Review about his plan to be less forthright.
“No one [in the GOP] is forcing me to do anything. I do exactly what I want, but I am also realistic about what it takes to run a campaign and get elected.” For instance, instead of calling for the elimination of many federal departments — as his father, Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican congressman and former presidential candidate, regularly does — Paul says he is trying to “nibble around the edges,” to “not be the person who says he will eliminate every department in the federal government. My dad freely will say that, that he would eliminate at least half of the departments, but he is just more forthright.”
In case that isn’t clear, here’s more:
As we turn to foreign policy, Paul says it is on this front that he finds himself most at odds with the GOP. However, he confides that he seldom talks about his foreign-policy positions, because what the voters really care about is economic matters. On the campaign trail, he says, “I’m not thinking about Afghanistan; foreign policy is really a complete non-issue.”
His plan is to only talk about the issues he wants to talk about and ignore everything else.
As the flareup over his civil-rights remarks fades into the vast wasteland of old news, Paul says he is focusing more on winning the race than on winning an argument…
…[opponent Jack] Conway, he notes, may be “telegenic, and they say he has a much squarer jaw than I do,” but “I think I can outwit him.”
Here’s what he says will happen if he wins in November.
“I think I will be part of a nucleus with Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, who are unafraid to stand up,” Paul says. “If we get another loud voice in there, like Mike Lee from Utah or Sharron Angle from Nevada, there will be a new nucleus. . . . Term limits, a balanced-budget amendment, having bills point to where they are enumerated in the Constitution — those issues resonate with the tea party. I know Republicans are trying to get something going, and I don’t know their list, but if I had a contract with America, these things would be in it. These are not radical ideas — they are reform-minded, good-government ideas.”
Does this sound like something the country needs? A nucleus of Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Mike Lee?
I’m telling you, it’s time to get serious about this threat.
They’re partying like it’s 1994…the old Contract on America rears its hideous head. And instead of looking like Newt Gingrich, it looks like Jim DeMint.
So who is the progressive “new nucleus” on the Democratic side, the four or five Senators who can “get something going” and lay out a legislative agenda that will appeal to the voters?
And lest we forget:
— a balanced budget amendment takes away Congress’s power to wage war
— maybe some of the incumbent Republicans can do what Bob Inglis did and show us what term limits look like
— bills point to where they are enumerated in the Constitution will look a lot like the budgets of the 1970s and 1980s that were organized by the phrase in the Preamble that authorized them
— maybe he will try to get the line-item veto past the Supreme Court; seems that a Democratic president using a line-item veto was not what they had in mind
None of that has a shot in hell of happening. There is zero chance that any Republican would ever pass a balanced budget amendment that didn’t explicitly exempt military spending, there’s no way they would ever really pass term limits (not that I think they should, but Newt’s Contract on America showed us they aren’t really serious about it), and line-item veto is dead because Republican pols figured out that Democratic presidents will get elected eventually and they can selectively edit the parts you wanted out of bills. Line-item veto is only good when you have some kind of guarantee that Republicans will always hold the Oval Office.
I hadn’t heard about the organization of budgets in the 70s and 80s though. Any link with a history of why they started doing that and why they stopped?
I think that it was done to do sort of what Rand Paul is suggesting about legislation. Explicitly state the Constitutional link.
I think it was stopped because it was clear that almost anything you put in a budget could be tied back to one of the clauses of the preamble. And because it was unwieldy in trying to figure out what appropriations to make.
I’m sorry BooMan, I cannot get serious about this threat until I have my pony.
How is the netroots not rallying around Conway…the guy has a legit shot at taking out Paul. It shocks me that he only raised a million last month. The no-name-no-shot opponent of Joe “You Lie” Wilson made that in a few days.
For a race in Kentucky, that is a good haul. The media markets there aren’t all that expensive. Also, the people who would be more likely to vote Democratic are the people being hurt the most by this recession.
Agreed. I’m shocked to see Tea Party stickers on cars in the Los Angeles region. When Nixon talked of the ‘silent majority’ he wasn’t that far off. If all people watch is Fox News, and sadly, a majority do, then they may believe the Tea Party is for them.
I don’t know what it’s going to take for this country to realize the problem isn’t that we’re too left of center – it’s that we’re nowhere near left ENOUGH of center..!
At this point I’d say we’re just nowhere. This is why we’re so easily managed.
Shorter Rand Paul Plan B:
Does this remind anyone else of the tactics that Supreme Court nominees have been following recently?
So now both elected and appointed public officials’ opinions and leanings will be shrouded in mystery.
Sounds like a healthy way to run a democracy to me.
It is a good way to run “Democracy Inc.” since your knowing what candidates actually intended to is clearly not the point of our government anymore. As long as the corporate citizens know what the 3 branches of
CorporatismGovernment plan to do and they are OK with it… Why should we, the real people, need to know or ever worry about it?They can tell us nothing or they can lie to us, and sometimes even seem sincere about the lies, but it is not like they will actually be held accountable for that stuff anyways. Right?
Man, I am feeling cynical these days. lol
Democracy? What democracy?
If the United States had had a balanced budget amendment in 1930:
It would have taken many decades to climb out of the Great Depression, if we ever could.
Hitler would have steam rolled over Europe, the British Isles and taken and held most of the western Soviet Union.
The United States would always have been a second rate power.
Tea party = the usual angry populist mob that corporate interests can hide behind.
What’s new is that we now have 24/7 corporate media to make the mob look really cohesive.