There are basically two things I figured Rand Paul would be good for in the U.S. Senate. First, he’d be a major skeptic about foreign military intervention and ask tough questions before the Senate signed off on any more adventures. Second, he’d be an ally on most civil liberties issues, perhaps including the War on Drugs. But in his first two real tests he’s been a failure. Does anyone remember Paul getting any national attention during the run-up to intervention in Libya? And, now, during the debate over the Patriot Act reauthorization, he made an effort but gained no allies on the Democratic side other than the two senators from Montana. Why? Because he chose to be an extremist.
A senatorial peacock with a rust-colored crown, Mr. Paul stands out as someone who, at least for now, seems to be here less to make laws than points. His libertarian-leaning amendments — one would have made it harder for counterterrorism investigators to obtain firearms records and another would have relieved banks from their duty to report suspicious transactions — failed by wide margins, even among Republicans.
He should have joined with senators like Ron Wyden and Mark Udall who have been warning of a secret Patriot Act within the Patriot Act, where the administration is interpreting the law more broadly than the legislative language can justify. He should have latched on to truly controversial aspects of the bill, like the roving wire tap provision and the business record authorizations. Instead, he got four votes for one amendment and ten votes for the other. And he earned the wrath of his colleagues who had their vacation plans disrupted so they could stay in town to debate Paul’s vanity.
On the issues that Paul really cares about, he doesn’t have majority support in either party, so, for him to be successful, he really needs to work hard on building strong personal relationships. Only through earning the good will of a lot of Democrats and the trust of most Republicans, can he ever hope to pass the kinds of bills he wants to pass. On civil liberties issues, with the exception of gun control, the Democrats are his more natural allies. On the Patriot Act, there is much more skepticism on the Democratic side of the aisle than the Republican side.
Instead of focusing on building relationships and finding areas of common concern, Paul just pissed off virtually the entire Senate and accomplished nothing. It’s not an auspicious start for a new senator.
Just like a real peacock, after the distraction of the feathers there’s only a brain the size of a pea, even smaller than a turkey’s which oftentimes proves inadequate to even find the water trough.
I can’t say pissing off the entire Senate has to be a bad thing. The enemy of your enemy and all….
I don’t know that he wants or expects to be successful getting laws passed, at least in the short term, but that doesn’t make him any more of a “peacock” than, say, Sanders or Kucinich. Somebody has to be there to force the “extreme” ideas into the spotlight. My problem with Paul is not that he chooses to be “extremist”, but that he picks the petty and pointless issues to grandstand about instead of the more basic civil liberties outrages that we see supported by both parties. In a way, he isn’t extremist enough.
What I find interesting in all this is how he was such a media darling when making general anti-big guv noises during the campaign, but seems to have fallen into a black hole now that he’s actually proposed amendments that might make the plutocracy uncomfortable.
DaveW, from what I know, I’d disagree about Sanders. He seems more like a senator who wants to get things done—whether it’s voting for the ACA even though it doesn’t have a single-payer option, or looking for allies on civil liberties bills.
That’s, in my view, different than regularly positioning oneself as the solitary “no” vote time after time. (Not that there isn’t a place for the occasional solitary vote.)
That’s true, when it comes to votes. But Sanders does regularly submit bills/amendments that have no chance of going anywhere because they’re too “radical”. I certainly didn’t mean that as a diss on Sanders or Kucinich. I wish there were more like them. The real difference between them and Paul, I think, is that they go for real ideas while Paul seems mostly content to just throw grenades. I wish he would get fundamentally radical with focused agitation on the drugwar, the military, and the attack from all sides on basic civil liberties.
The guy is named after Ayn Rand, and by all appearances takes what she wrote very seriously.
That makes him, by definition, a stupid asshole. He cannot help himself, it’s what he is.
nalbar
The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People.
This phenomenon is certainly not limited to left-wing Protest People.
Art is the handmaid of human good.
I agree.
i dunno.
I don’t like Rand Paul either, but I’m glad someone made a stink about it. Both of my senators, the lunatic and the milquetoast, voted for PATRIOT renewal, no questions asked.
They didn’t piss anyone off though, and that’s the important thing. God forbid someone get angry about gross violations of our civil liberties.
I didn’t expect he’d be good for anything at all. He was divisive and caused resentments during the Republican Party primary in Kentucky- divisive from the right, not from the left. He appeared, and appears, to be nothing but a bomb-thrower. In the views he has that move in our direction (Patriot Act, military intervention, an unaccountable Fed, etc.) his rhetoric is often thoughtless and fails to draw in supporters or votes.
Our current, foolish public dialogue has it that working across the aisle on common issues means that you’re a sellout. A person who’s genuinely interested in forming the best policies would be unswayed by that sort of formulation. Rand is an idealogue who hates his political enemies- how are we to expect that a guy like that would form relationships, across the aisle or not? In his attitute, he’s purely Tea Party- NO COMPROMISE!!!