Posted on 01/03/2011 6:45:48 AM PST by speciallybland
For much of his 21 years in Congress, Rep. Ron Paul has been a party of one.
The Lake Jackson Republican's libertarian sensibilities make him a cult figure to some and a painful thorn in the side to others, including members of his own party. In retaliation for prizing ideology over party, he often was passed over by the GOP hierarchy for plum posts.
Next year, however, looks different for the Paul family.
Rand Paul, one of five children of Ron and Carol Paul, will share his father's Virginia condominium — after winning an election of his own. In addition to a change of clothing, he will bring a tea party agenda of deficit reduction and limited government that is remarkably similar to the ideas that Ron Paul has been espousing for decades.
That shouldn't be much of a surprise. After all, Rand Paul grew up watching his father on the political stage.
In 1976, 13-year-old Rand paid rapt attention as a group of insurgent conservatives fought on the floor of the Republican National Convention to replace President Gerald Ford with Ronald Reagan on the party's ticket. One of the foot soldiers in the Reagan revolution - unsuccessful that bicentennial summer but triumphant four years later - was his father, then a freshman congressman from Texas and one of only four GOP lawmakers with the temerity to endorse Reagan.
"Seeing him stand up for someone he believed in, not just doing whatever the establishment wanted him to, meant a lot to me," Rand Paul said in an interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Classic Paulistinian, that one. Good grief.
I hope that Rand shares the same political views. We can’t afford to keep policing every knook and cranny on the planet.
Amen - what part of BROKE do people not understand?
They want to kill us anyway.
Frankly, if you're willing to tell those people you're willing to take the first hit I suppose it's OK that we're not out there trying to find them first.
I mean, like why should I care what happens to you? Maybe we can get a big arrow or something and float it over your house on a blimp ~ just aim it down and say "Hey, terrorist Nut Balls, here's your boy ~ do it!"
Would that be OK?
Again - we are broke.
Sorry - we have spent TRILLIONS already and heading for fiscal collapse, exactly what Bin Laden wanted and said his goal was.
We got DHS, Patriot ACt, TSA, more nanny state bs, etc all in the name of the WOT.
Sorry - I fear our own govt far more than a few rag heads at this point.
Over-extended militarily and financially, just like Bourbon France and Hapsburg Spain and post-WW2 Great Britain.
Its amazing that some of these neocon types act like history will not repeat itself and serves no lessons for us.
We simply cant afford this anymore.
I’m one of those who could have been described as one of those “neocon types” but ultimately you have to evaluate what you can accomplish, and what the costs are, and what you can afford, and as you said so well, “we are broke”
We have spent trillions of dollars since 2001. how much more are taxpayers supposd to pay?
And how much more devaluation of our currency are we supposed to accept to keep funding this?
The evidence is against you. Study after study, most notably by Robert Pape, in his careful statistical study, Dying to Win, have shown that the primary motivations for suicide attacks throughout the world are foreign occupation. You don't believe Pape? Well then, will you believe Paul Wolfowitz? Back in 2003, Wolfowitz contended (shades of Ron Paul!) that the occupation of the Arabian penninsula was a leading recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. Here is what he said:
There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.
In other words, even Wolfowitz seems to agree that they hate us because we're over there.
My answers are none and none.
Those questions are better for Kristol, most of the GOP, most of the Dems, and most of the posters on this forum.
Boy, I sure hope so! Those Pauls are too rare in 2010. Principal over party.
Defeat is not an option.
paultards are in lockstep with the cut and run leftists..
What a bunch of yellow surrender monkeys..
I have a few buddies who did yours in Afghanistan. Sure these people are savages and barbarians.
However, most have zero intent or ability to ever come here. Something like 90% have never hearda radi or seen a newspaper, let alone have a passport or the ability to get on a us airline.
Sure, we should keep up the special ops stuff, but this nation building stuff is pure crappola and serving only t fund military contractors, corrupt local officials, and bankrupting the USA.
I’m not going for ths anymore considering the threats we face here at home from our own govt w evaluaton of our currency, nanny state, oppresive taxation, etc.
“I hope that Rand shares the same political views.”
THOSE views?
Ron Paul may have some good points on fiscal matters, but outside that lane, he borders on being in the nutcase zone. And if Rand indeed shares those views, Kentucky made a mistake by electing him.
Yeah, if only we could get GWB clones in the senate and house.
As far as I am concerned, the shortcomings of Ron and Rand are grossly outweighed by the good they bring to the table.
The era of the neocons is thankfully ending.
Our debt was foreign held back then.
Continuting down this course means we are funding two militaries; ours and China’s through debt payments.
Now, I’ve heard of funding both sides before, but it looks like for WW3 we might just wind up doing it.
Surrender? To whom? There is no one whom to surrender. There is no one to defeat us. We just end up spending vast sums to play deset whack-amole. 10 years. One trillion plus. 5,000 plus American lives lost. We’ve done it to ourselves. And to what end?
While that may be true, they've shown themselves to be quite willing to host and give aid to terror groups who will make the trip.
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