Posted on 02/10/2015 5:35:27 AM PST by iowamark
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa – An early Saturday morning political event on an unusually warm February day might not be the ideal conditions to draw a good crowd. However, 140 Marshall County Republicans packed into the Legends American Grill in Marshalltown to hear their new representative in Congress, Rod Blum, and likely presidential candidate Rand Paul.
Most of Rod Blum’s brief remarks focused on his tangle with President Obama’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, last week on Capitol Hill. Iowa’s new First District representative also relayed his controversial first vote in Congress, supporting Daniel Webster over John Boehner for House speaker. Many in the room applauded when Blum mentioned that vote.
“It was not easy to do. There was a tremendous amount of pressure to keep the status quo in Washington and in fact, my friends, I did not sleep the night before. I could not sleep. I was tossing and turning thinking about that vote,” Blum recalled.
Adding that Speaker Boehner is a “good man” with “a tough job”, Blum said he vote was not against John Boehner as much as it was fulfilling a campaign promise to change the status quo in Washington.
Although Blum and Rand Paul are allied with the liberty wing of the Iowa GOP and the new congressman heaped praise on Paul for trying to bring new voters into the party, Rod Blum does not plan to endorse Paul or anyone else in the Iowa Caucuses.
“No, I don’t plan to endorse anyone,” Blum told this writer during an interview on WHO Radio Friday. “I might at the very end. We need a strong leader. We need genuine, authentic leadership and I may rise or fall in my election in two years based on who this presidential candidate is.”
Rand Paul was received warmly by the Marshalltown the crowd. His speech was filled with much of Paul’s usual stump speech material. The Kentucky senator provided anecdotal examples of Congress wasting millions in taxpayer money on frivolous things like studying whether or not male fruit flies are attracted to younger female fruit flies.
He railed against Obamacare and the mountain of regulations embedded in that bill, Dodd-Frank and others signed and promoted by President Obama.
“I have another very radical proposal. You won’t tell anybody how radical it is. They should real the bills before they pass them,” Paul said as the audience applauded loudly. “I have a bill that says they have to wait 20 days for every page. So, a couple hundred days, it might keep them busy for awhile.”
When Senator Paul veered into foreign policy, his words raised a few eyebrows. Amid new allegations from the man known as the 20th 9/11 hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, that high-ranking Saudis were involved in the 9/11 attacks, Senator Paul bolstered those claims.
“Do you know that the missing pages of the 9/11 report that are not allowed to be made public, I can tell you what I think is in them because I haven’t read them. They’re still top secret. There are links of the attackers on 9/11 to high people in the Saudi Arabian government and wealthy people in the Saudi Arabian society,” Paul claimed.
The Saudis asked for the redacted 28 pages from the 9/11 Commission Report to be released a dozen years ago. Other members of Congress have made accusations similar to Rand Paul’s.
“They’ve been financing radical Islam for 30, 40, 50 years. If they’re an ally, they need to be told no more,” the Kentucky senator added, saying the Saudis need to help in the fight against ISIS.
Rand Paul’s final comments to the Marshalltown crowd were even more provocative.
“This country is the greatest country ever. We just need to unleash the American public, unleash the ingenuity. When that happens again, I say Katie bar the door, I say America will be the greatest country on the Earth again. Thank you very much,” Paul concluded, without telling the crowd which country is the greatest on Earth right now.
The crowd applauded Paul’s speech and the majority of it was well received.
“He’s a good man. Whether or not I agree with him all the time, he says what he believes and they all need to do that,” said Marshalltown native Michelle Haugle.
“I like Rand and I liked his father, too,” said Bill Walters, Haugle’s father.
Marshall County GOP Chairman Pete Rogers was especially pleased with the size of the crowd.
“The turnout was tremendous,” said Marshall County GOP Chairman Pete Rogers. “As an organizer in the county, it’s really important for me to show these national level candidates that it’s worth their time to come and have these opportunities and I think this did nothing to dissuade that, so I’m hopeful that the senator will say that it was well worth his time so it’ll be easier to get others here.”
Barack Obama recently shook hands with a bunch of Saudi royals and now he’s back in this country soft pedaling terrorism.
George W. Bush flew a bunch of Saudis out of this country after 9/11.
There’s a heck of a lot of Saudi money pouring into the economies of the world like ours.
The UK lowered its flag to half staff when the Saudi king died the other week.
And Rand is his daddy’s little boy!
Anyone who campaigns on a platform including unfriending Saudi Arabia will bring in a lot of votes. JMHO
Let’s not be too hasty. Al Qaeda is the mortal enemy of Saudi Arabia and wants to see the kingdom destroyed and replaced by themselves. It strikes me they did their level best to make sure that as much of the blowback as possible for 911 is directed at Saudi Arabia. And it would appear they are still doing so to this very day.
Rand Paul's immigration speech...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Rand Paul calls on conservatives to embrace immigration reformLatinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
[but he's not in favor of amnesty, snicker, definition of is is]
Rand Paul On Shutdown: "Even Though It Appeared I Was Participating In It, It Was A Dumb Idea"I said throughout the whole battle that shutting down the government was a dumb idea. Even though it did appear as if I was participating in it, I said it was a dumb idea. And the reason I voted for it, though, is that it's a conundrum. Here's the conundrum. We have a $17 trillion debt and people at home tell me you can't give the president a blank check. We just can't keep raising the debt ceiling without conditions. So unconditionally raising the debt ceiling, nobody at home wants me to vote for that and I can't vote for that. But the conundrum is if I don't we do approach these deadlines. So there is an impasse. In 2011, though, we had this impasse and the president did negotiate. We got the sequester. If we were to extend the sequester from discretionary spending to all the entitlements we would actually fix our problem within a few years.[Posted on 11/19/2013 12:16:51 PM by Third Person]
Rand Paul: Time for GOP to soften war stance...by softening its edge on some volatile social issues and altering its image as the party always seemingly "eager to go to war... We do need to expand the party and grow the party and that does mean that we don't always all agree on every issue" ... the party needs to become more welcoming to individuals who disagree with basic Republican doctrine on emotional social issues such as gay marriage... "We're going to have to be a little hands off on some of these issues ... and get people into the party," Paul said.[Posted on 01/31/2013 5:08:50 PM PST by xzins]
Sen. Rand Paul is hammering his fellow senators for keeping billions in financial aid flowing to Egypt's military -- even as Cairo's security forces massacre anti-government activists. [by "anti-government activists" is meant church-burning Christian-murdering jihadists][Posted on 08/15/2013 5:44:10 PM PDT by Hoodat]
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