Last week, we were blessed with two solid examples of how the right-wing brain works. In the first, which garnered the most attention, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke for thirteen hours on the Senate floor about a totally tangential issue. After having been assured that the president did not have the authority to launch missiles at U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, he complained about how difficult it was to get the administration to offer the assurance. Many longtime critics of the government’s drone program were happy to have some support from the Republican side of the aisle, but Senator Paul was focused on the wrong issue. The concern is, and had been, about U.S. citizens abroad, and about the effectiveness, morality and implications of the drone program in general.
The other example occurred on the Fox News program The O’Reilly Factor, when host Bill O’Reilly exploded in rage at his guest Alan Colmes, calling him a liar. He has since offered a halfhearted apology. The confrontation began when O’Reilly falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to offer cuts to specific programs as a way to entice the Republicans to make a budget deal. When Colmes pointed out that the administration had offered cuts to both Social Security and Medicare, O’Reilly said, “Not entitlements, one program!”
O’Reilly was confused. We do indeed have things we call “government programs.” The school lunch program is one example. But Medicare and Social Security are also government programs. They are, in fact, very big government programs. This fact is so undeniable that O’Reilly was compelled to apologize, but, in doing so, he rationalized his performance.
“Even though I’m sorry I said Alan was lying, I should not have used that word, I’m glad the exposition occurred,” O’Reilly said during his introductory monologue on the 8 p.m. show “Talking Points.”
…After apologizing Thursday night, O’Reilly added, “the truth is Mr. Obama has not put forth any specific federal spending cuts. It’s all a bunch of general nonsense,” adding that he raised his voice to “get everybody’s attention — I think I succeeded,” Politico reported.
The point, of course, is that Obama has put forth specific federal spending cuts, so O’Reilly was apologizing without admitting that he was wrong about the issue at hand. And then he asserted that making a stink about the wrong issue was successful because it got people’s attention.
Now, O’Reilly is more concerned about ratings than policy, but we can make the same charge against Rand Paul. After his filibuster was over, he wrote a column in the Washington Post about why he did it, but it was mostly about how much attention and support he had received from fellow lawmakers and the Twitterverse. He repeated his false claim that the administration hadn’t been clear that it agreed with him before he started his filibuster, and he rationalized making a bullshit off-target argument for 13 hours this way:
I hope my efforts help spur a national debate about the limits of executive power and the scope of every American’s natural right to be free. “Due process” is not just a phrase that can be ignored at the whim of the president; it is a right that belongs to every citizen in this great nation.
I believe the support I received this past week shows that Americans are looking for someone to really stand up and fight for them. And I’m prepared to do just that.
If he had spent his time talking about the kangaroo court military commissions or Guantanamo Bay or airstrikes against American citizens in Yemen or something real, then this summary would have made sense. There really wasn’t any reason for Rand Paul to base his entire protest on a false premise. I don’t think he got more attention because he was making a false argument. What he did was make his side of the argument look ridiculous, which is a disservice to the people who have legitimate and truthful concerns about the drone program and our civil liberties.
Now, he did spur a national debate, just as Bill O’Reilly created a lot of press stories about his rant, but in both cases the real point was to get attention for themselves. O’Reilly wants ratings. Rand Paul is running for president.
A-fucking-men, Booman. 100% agree. And like I said on the other thread, even IF Paul was arguing for the correct conclusions (as I see them), I would still think he’s wrong because of his underlying principles. Everyone should be extremely skeptical of advocates who say to ignore the “right-left” paradigm. It matters, a lot, how one journeys to their stated conclusions.
See also Rick Perlstein:
What to Make of the Droning on Drones From the Right?
And also, Steve M:
If I were President Obama, right now I’d endorse the Rand Paul/Ted Cruz drone bill. What does the president have to lose, really? Through Attorney General Holder, he’s already expressed agreement with the narrow principle outlined in the bill (“The Federal Government may not use a drone to kill a citizen of the United States who is located in the United States. The prohibition under this subsection shall not apply to an individual who poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to another individual”) — in fact, the bill seems to allow a targeted drone killing of a common criminal using deadly force, never mind a citizen terrorist. So, what the hell, Mr. President — go for it. Say you’ll sign it if it reaches your desk. Take the wind out of the Nu-Republicans’ sails.
Because what else have these guys got that resonates with the broad public, as opposed to the usual gang of crazies in the GOP base? I saw that Rand Paul had written a Washington Post op-ed titled “My Filibuster Was Just the Beginning” and thought I’d get an answer to that question, but the op-ed has nothing whatsoever to say about further Nu-Republican agenda items. It’s basically just an Academy Award acceptance speech for Paul’s filibuster
Commenter Mandos at Ian Welsh’s place argues that it’s possible to conceive that drone strikes will only be more likely as a result of this charade:
In the sense of a general finding of personal fault, based on an individualistic moral analysis–yes, sure, why not? I mean, it’s true in the most trivial way: Obama’s the president! (With reservations as to what you mean by “his fellow trash”.)
In the sense of what does it mean in the context of US political history and what enabled it to occur (meaning people like Obama to take power) and how to react to it, it is…non sequitur, to say the least. For one thing, it predated Obama, so almost by definition, he doesn’t “own” it.
I know y’all don’t like to hear this having taken the red pill and all that, but: the central problem is and remains the boogeyman of the so-called “fauxgressives”, the leaden weight of the US political right, in all its well-clichéd and stereotyped glory.
Is it that hard to conceive that Rand Paul’s filibuster might actually make future drone strikes by future administrations more likely, not less? That neither he nor any of his ilk ever intend a principled stand on these matters at face value? That the so-called libertarian right and its as-demonstrably-insincere-as-Obama association with these issues is as much as mere partisan wedge as anything else?
So, yes, Paul may well have commited a mitzvah in his actions, from the perspective of an individualistic moral analysis. The question is the extent to which the individualistic moral analysis can be substituted as an answer to the question of what it means in the context of US political history, etc.
That dude has built his own vocabulary and I am not going to learn it so that I can be conversant in his language.
We can’t have a conversation about sudden death rained down from above by the government on its citizens because the wrong people are bringing it up. Some are too libertarian; others are too progressive; this guy’s too green; that one’s too insincere; and don’t even mention Nadersquatch if you know what’s good for you.
In the meantime, a few more people get blown to pieces for the mortal sin of straying into the cross-hairs of some medal-sporting joystick jockey peering at a computer screen. We are supposed to be assured and comforted that all kinds of processes and procedures are scrupulously followed before that button gets pushed. No, you can’t know what those processes and procedures are, Nosy Parker.
Someday, the person who’s ju-u-u-ust right will come along, our champion, our savior, our . . . our GOLDILOCKS will broach the subject in just the right way, not too shrill and not too sanctimoniously, and we will finally engage the question of summary execution of our citizens and other people of whom we are deathly afraid.
Until then, that critic is too mean, that one said something stupid once upon a time, that one over there is just cynically manipulating the issue for his own ends, that person . . .
Tis a real thing, the wrong messenger.
It’s something intelligence agencies figured out long ago.
They can go about it in a variety of ways.
They can infiltrate a group of agitators and instigate actions that will discredit them and, therefore, their issue.
They can choose to amplify the most shrill voices, thereby discrediting the group by association.
They can recruit people to make extreme variants of the reasonable complaint, as in the JFK assassination community.
Guarding against these types of tactics takes wisdom and vigilance, but if you care about drones, you should guard against those who make ridiculous variants of the central concern.
You know what isn’t a serious conversation about the drone strike program? This:
In the meantime, a few more people get blown to pieces for the mortal sin of straying into the cross-hairs of some medal-sporting joystick jockey peering at a computer screen.
If you want to talk about the drone strike program, fine, let’s talk about the drone strike program. The thing is, that’s not what Rand Paul was doing.
I mean think about this, if you had 13 hours to drone on about the drones, would you waste it on total nonsense?If you’re serious about throwing a spotlight on this whole situation, you’re actually letting the administration off the hook if you spend all your time talking about something that isn’t even happening.
And you also have to think about how this dovetails with other issues that Rand Paul’s target audience is obsessed with, like gun control. Why do I need an assault rifle with a 100 round clip and a grenade launcher? Because I never know when Barack Obama is going to rain hellfire down on me!
There are a lot of different ways to get people killed, and fueling anti-government paranoia is one of them. So if the deaths are what’s really bothering you, that’s another thing to think about.
This week when Obama hosted the Rep Senators for dinner and one of them commented to the press that he learned that Obama had actually specified the cuts he would agree to look at with them but that his leadership had not shared that information with him.
The fact that he hadn’t bothered to even have his staff look at the list posted at Whitehouse.gov but was content to wait in ignorance for his talking points reminded me of Rand Paul’s challenge to Hillary Clinton when he baldly noted that had he been President and found out that she hadn’t read all her correspondence he would have relieved her of her post.
The point becomes even more stark when you see that she had 3 million emails to read, yet she delegated so that someone from her staff read them vs these Senators and their staff willfully ignore communications before, during and after they criticize.
Seems Sarah Palin’s tactic to respond, ‘well, I haven’t read anything that supports that’ is SOP today.
… but in both cases the real point was to get attention for themselves. O’Reilly wants ratings. Rand Paul is running for president.
Yet you were slobbering all over Cranky McSame the other day for telling Rand Paul to shut up and learn his place. McSame is the same as Rand Paul, an attention seeking dirtbag.
There really wasn’t any reason for Rand Paul to base his entire protest on a false premise.
I don’t care what Rand Paul was basing his protest on, the fact that he talked about something our government does that rarely gets talked about is a good thing. Very few Senators rarely have altruistic, or coherent reasons for doing the things they do.
The Republican efforts to avoid naming anything that they would cut themselves is getting pathetic.
I don’t think Paul made his side of the argument look ridiculous. I haven’t heard that from anyone but you, McCain and Graham.
During his filibuster, Senator Paul presented the spectre of peacable people sitting in public coffee shops posing no immediate threat getting instantly killed by a drone. He gained a direct answer from Holder on that; the DOJ would consider that unconstitutional.
Did Rand demand a comprehensive list of activities Americans might engage in that would define them in the Administration’s eyes as an “enemy combatant” that places them “on the battlefield” in line with the war powers granted the President in the AUMF? Did he discover what the DOJ viewed as within the President’s Constitutional and legal powers to do to people in the United States who are classified as ememy combatants?
Did Paul (or Senator Cruz, in all his grandstanding glory) get answers from Holder about whether the DOJ viewed the President as empowered by any articles outside the AUMF to surveil, apprehend, use extreme interrogation techniques or other extraordinary powers against Americans, such as they did to Bradley Manning, and the Bust Administration did to Jose Padilla? Did we discover if the Administration viewed itself as empowered outside the AUMF to execute al-awlaki and others outside the U.S.? Was there a discussion of the wisdom and potential blowback as a result of these extrajudicial international killings? Did Paul question the arrests and harassments suffered by many more Americans suspected of being terrorists and later found to be innocent, one of those innocents being a frequent commenter on the Frog Pond? Did Rand dig deeply into these during his filibuster as failures of due process?
Those are much more important questions, would you agree? You know why Paul and Cruz didn’t get answers to those much more pressing questions? BECAUSE THEY AGREE WITH THE ACTIONS TAKEN AGAINST MANNING AND PADILLA AND AL-AWLAKI.
These Senators are not on our side. Period.
And if it weren’t for them NOTHING would have been said.
Is NOTHING preferable to a clear statement that the president doesn’t have the power to execute Americans at whim? Because he might have had the authority to do that based on the justifications we had so far.
In restraining the security state I’m willing to play footsie with anyone for making any progress however small or symbolic.
Rand PAul was always about the GRIFT.
anyone who thought otherwise is a damn fool.
his Daddy milked the rubes for two decades.
Rand is continuing the family tradition.
Doesn’t that go just about for any politician though? I get email crap from the DSCC & DCCC all the time trying to hit me up for money.
No, not really. When Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders asked me to give money to their campaign, I knew it would be used to help get them elected so they could work on my behalf. Not all politicians are in it for their own wealth and power. It is of utmost importance that we do not encourage the thought that “they all do it”. We need to teach people to tell the difference.
no. I’m not talking about the ‘I’m running for Congress, help me’ money.
Ron Paul was a GRIFTER. sometimes taking in a million dollars or more from his libertarian rubes.
Rand Paul is continuing the family grift.
If drones were used along the Arizona-Mexican border to hunt illegals I bet you wouldn’t have anyone from the right side of the aisle barking.
Well, here is Rand Paul’s own page on immigration. So he supports militarizing the border, with all of the civil rights violations that would inevitably entail. But I’m sure President Paul would never dream of using drone strikes.
Rand would probably be in support of drone Tazering on the border, though. Compliance measures, right? He’s quite an inconsistent Libertarian, that’s for sure.
Now that I look at his full page on immigration, I see this fucking clown wants to replace our international military bases with military bases on the border, as he sees border crossers as direct threats to our national security. So, why rely on drone missles when soldiers can provide the deadly force?
Rand would probably be in support of drone Tazering on the border, though. Compliance measures, right? He’s quite an inconsistent Libertarian, that’s for sure.
Now that I look at his full page on immigration, I see this fucking clown wants to replace our international military bases with military bases on the border, as he sees border crossers as direct threats to our national security. So, why rely on drone missles when soldiers can provide the deadly force?