Posted on 06/02/2015 7:05:38 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Kentucky senator walks a tight line between pleasing libertarians and alienating moderates.
Rand Paul is a man besieged.
Eight weeks into his White House bid, the Kentucky Republican is hurting for deep-pocketed donors, watching supporters of his libertarian father, Ron Paul, gravitate toward opponents and getting flogged by a GOP establishment that abhors his calls for a less interventionist approach to foreign policy.
But his latest confrontation with Republican power brokers — a move to block the renewal of the PATRIOT Act and federal spying programs — has also exposed Paul’s increasingly imperiled tightrope walk toward his party’s nomination.
“His strategy is to move to the middle, to pull from the right and hopefully bring along many of his dad’s supporters, and then also to pull from the middle,” said Drew Ivers, who ran the elder Paul’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns but has yet to back the son. “In fact, he runs the risk of alienating both.”
Paul is working to succeed where his father failed: building a coalition of libertarian-minded activists without alienating traditional Republican Party voters who prefer proactive engagement abroad. Paul’s stand against the PATRIOT Act, which he’s long railed against, appears aimed at the former set, said Tom Rath, an influential New Hampshire Republican.
It also fits into his effort to appeal to less-traditional Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, which will likely determine whether his presidential bid survives the first weeks of 2016. It comes at a time when Republicans have been reconsidering their support for increasingly invasive domestic spying efforts, fueled in part by the leaks of former federal contractor Edward Snowden.
“Sen. Paul did a fantastic job over the weekend. He energized his base,” said Iowa state Sen. Jason Schultz, who said establishment Republicans who opposed Paul’s efforts “make us angry when they open their mouths.”
Yet, Schultz himself is at the heart of Paul’s dilemma. He’s already endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president — a decision, he said, was based on Cruz’s consistency and willingness to challenge popular opinion, not any deficiency of Paul’s, per se.
“My support’s not genetic,” said Schultz, who supported Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman, in 2012. “Congressman Paul was not afraid to say the same message in front of whatever crowd … [Cruz] is not afraid to say what the crowd doesn’t want to hear. He’s totally consistent.”
Rath, a former Granite State attorney general, argued that while Paul’s position could energize a subset of GOP primary voters, it also “puts a ceiling on his ability to grow” and attract mainstream Republicans.
Similarly, the rise of militants in Iraq and Syria, along with the increasing instability in the Middle East, has reinvigorated the national security debate among Republicans and raised doubts about whether Paul’s nuanced position on federal spying efforts is sustainable.
One consequence that Paul doesn’t seem to mind? Criticism from his Senate colleagues. Paul’s maneuver to block the PATRIOT Act renewal quickly drew the scorn of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — a fellow Kentuckian who Paul helped reelect last year — and other Republican colleagues like Arizona’s John McCain and Indiana’s Dan Coats.
Paul seemed to relish their barbs, which bolster his claim as a principled outsider. He argues that underneath official Washington’s condemnations is a silent majority of grass-roots Republicans who support his recalcitrance.
“The Washington establishment on both sides is against me, but when you get outside of the Beltway, you find that a majority of Republicans do not like this government spying program … A majority feel that the government has gone too far,” he said on The Laura Ingraham Show on Monday.
Paul told reporters at the Capitol Monday that there’s nothing political about his effort. “Nobody questions my sincerity. I did the exact same fight in 2011 and I finally gave in when I got two amendments,” he said.
But Paul’s zeal to poke the establishment in the eye led to an unforced error that nearly detracted from his effort. During remarks on the Senate floor criticizing his colleagues who support preserving federal spying programs, Paul said, “Some of them I think secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.”
Though Paul later called the comment “hyperbole,” the fallout was fierce. Several of Paul’s opponents for the GOP nomination lobbed personal barbs and characterized his comments as self-centered, and the remark rippled to the early primary states.
“Rand Paul’s public comments suggesting that some politicians might actually wish for a terror attack just to prove him wrong are irresponsible and unfounded, and seriously call into question his temperament as candidate for president,” said Jamie Burnett, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire.
Yet Paul’s effort also showed something to the libertarians who could help keep him relevant in the early states. Though Ivers has sat out the race, he said Paul’s decision to stand against his party in the name of principle could be the start of a fresh look from his father’s supporters — and maybe even an endorsement from him.
“I would be open to that,” Ivers said. “I think he’s courageous to stand up for what is right. If this would be a new beginning … this could potentially be a defining moment in his presidential campaign.”
No.
It wasn’t legal to begin with. Only an idiot would believe the surveillance will end. We’ll find out some months or years down the road that it never even slowed down.
Without a doubt. Nothing the govt. begins ever ends. Just look at the history of all govt. programs. They just get bigger and more expansive at the years progress.
All that will happen is that the cost of storing all the metadata will be shifted from the NSA to the phone companies, and all of our bills will go up as a result.
I think he would have been a lot more effective going after the source of justification.
We’ve got muslims being brought in and living among us providing a reason for domestic spying. Also there’s the wide open border.
We need guys like Rand Paul in the Senate. Everybody cannot be President.
The former head of the CIA was on FNC this morning decrying Paul's success on the Patriot Act renewal, claiming that it will make us less safe and that we had nothing to worry about from the government's collection of data--he compared it to seeing the outside of the envelope. I don't know if I believe him--maybe postcards would be a better analogy.
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