Pretty much the only thing Rand Paul and his father have going for them is a willingness to question America’s role as a global policing power and the budgets that sustain that role. If Rand Paul isn’t going to stick with his position on those issues, he’s basically worthless.
In his first year in the Senate, Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a budget that called for a $164 billion cut to defense spending by 2016. “Military funding has often far outpaced not only our most likely enemies, but has often outpaced the entire world’s military spending combined,” he wrote at the time as he outlined his plan for a “draw-down and restructuring of the Department of Defense.”
Just four years later, as he prepares to mount a presidential campaign in early April, Paul is changing his tune. Late Wednesday, he introduced a budget amendment which would increase the defense budget by 16 percent, or $190 billion, over the next two years, TIME reported.
I already mock anyone who presents Rand Paul as a desirable leader or serious voice, but from now on my abuse is going to be deafening.
Rand Paul is not a Hawk. He has shown what he is to all yet again. He is a CHICKEN!! He will say what he feels will get him in office. He is as strong as a house built on a foundation of loose sand. The country as a whole would be better off if he resigned and was never heard from again.
Oh, Boo — facts are irrelevant to believers. Last time I recall when facts did have an impact on believers of any politician was August 8, 1974. It felt as if this country had finally and simultaneously woken up and become adults. Alas, I was too young to recognize that such moments are fleeting, and denial and immaturity is the norm.
Sorry, Marie. Months later I was having breakfast in Charlottesville VA on Navy business with Sperry. In the next booth some nicely dressed white ladies were discussing how “Communists” drove Nixon out of office.
They all agreed. Why didn’t I say anything? I was a “Yankee” in their town. And a “furriner” with a funny name and I worked for the “guvmint”. Three strikes. I kept my mouth shut and tried to keep from laughing.
Wasn’t VA in the deep south at that time?
And didn’t mean to imply that the truth penetrated the minds of all believers. Just that portion of the electorate that still had minds.
Okay, but how many of those people were also in the same group of people who cheered on the Southern Strategy, the rise of the religious right, violent American overseas authoritarianism with the crowning horror of the Vietnam War, violent suppression of homosexuality, etc.? Considering the margin that 1972 Nixon and Reagan won by, I’m going to say ‘not many’.
That so-called redemptionist moment of Nixon’s impeachment, while extremely lucrative for American leftism and downright vital for the health of the country, did not in my opinion represent even a fleeting instance of non-leftists willing to face facts and challenge their preconceptions. It’s more like our fellow citizens shoved their heads into the sand and hoped that the portents that shook their faiths in the tribal myths of their providence and exceptionalism would just go away. Even if it meant prematurely casting the once-venerated shaman to the sacrificial pyre.
Yep. The Nixonians bided their time, and after the first Democratic president since Carter was elected, they abused the office of independent prosecutor and the impeachment process. They got two things out of it:
Was it ever not in the deep South?
The phrase “sold his birthright for a mess of pottage” comes to mind.